Ferri was particularly pleased with the color control he had using the Selador X7 fixture. “At this point, I don't know what else I would have used,” he says. I really liked the idea of the seven colors. I've tried to use three color LEDs to make white and that has never been very successful; the white is always cold.”

Ferri's assistant, LED technician and programmer for this project was Ed McEneney, who agrees that the Selador units were appropriate for the job. “It was a good choice for the project for many reasons. One it has the punch, two you have a higher resolution of color control, and also the units are very roadworthy.”

In order to take full advantage of the seven color mixing capabilities Ferri used a Pharos Lighting Playback Controller. “We have a laptop in the Pit Studio that has a custom designed interface to access the lights through Pharos and we also have a backup in the video truck with a second laptop, so the color temperature can be controlled,” he says.

Ferri and McEneney worked closely with both Selador and Pharos to customize the control and be able to access all of the Selador features. McEneney was pleased with the results, “Between Selador, Pharos, and us it became quite the collaboration and it worked out very well. The customized laptop has a control panel that was made by Pharos to our specifications, which allowed us to control all the LEDs,” he adds. “It actually gave us individual color control of all seven colors in the Selador, which was pretty cutting edge because there isn't really a fixture personality out there or the software for it that

can use seven colors. I think people are realizing they have to develop this because what Selador has done with the seven colors seems like the way of the future.”

The Pit Studio's debut in February marked a great success for both ESPN and Ferri, who took a real chance with this idea. “I am proud of the whole system,” states a relieved Ferri. “It was a nail biter until the very end. I was afraid it wouldn't work and then were would I be. It is a new idea of using LEDs to light people, in fact having the entire studio completely LED, but I figured once I went that far why not go the whole way.”

 Selador, who introduced the patent-pending concept of seven LED colors, offers a range of fixtures that have the ability to mix deep, rich color and whites at any color temperature allowing for rendered colored objects and skin tones. The units are compact, have low power consumption, and are DMX controllable. They come standard in black or silver and can be anodized to any color. All of the products begin with a primary beam spread of 12 degrees and have slots that accommodate secondary lenses that alter the beam spread from 20 to 80 degrees in 10-degree increments.