Chameleon : Mac Lighting Software

We found out recently that Chameleon is being used on the award-winning Zombie show, The Walking Dead. We caught up with Greg Souris, the show's dimmer board op.

Hey Greg, how did you get into lighting?

I started in "rock and roll" as an LD for an Atlanta GA metal club called "The Masquerade. I've done concert lighting for bands like Dokken, Black Label Society, 30 Seconds to Mars, Gym Class Heroes, Mastadon and many more. For film, I worked on The Blind Side, Xmen First Class, Hall Pass, Three Stooges, Drop Dead Diva, Life as we Know It, The Collection. Many more.

What's your role right now?

Currently I am the dimmer board op for "the Walking Dead 3" I am running 3 stages and a location here and there.

What's your current setup?

I have two universes full of  ETC dimmer racks. The studio provided me with two ETC obsession 2s. I installed chameleon in my Mac as my own personal back up at first. I started programming my stage looks to match my ETC boards. Once I had it programmed I found the mobile aspect gave me more time to work and really fine tune my big chases.

I ended up having more data on my Mac so I started using it as my primary. I tried other software on the most recent operating system and Chameleon ran the smoothest for me. We did a big location with many chases. I built them poolside on the weekend. On the day I walked on set, plugged up my dmx and my show was ready to go. Waiting to build a 96 channel chase is too much waiting these days.

What makes Chameleon work for you?

Chameleon is easy to use. Dragging and dropping files to build scenes  and chases gives me a visual of what I'm building as files instead of just numbers. Most controllers that run % round it off but Chameleon gives me a decimal so I can sound smarter when my boss asks what intensity I am at. These guys use lighting meters so the details really count.

Thanks, Greg!

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If you have a story about how you've been using Chameleon, get in touch.