The idea was to have the flashlight effect by using the layer effect multiply on a layer with a background. The background itself was a simple gradient, so I thought why fill up the whole layer with the gradient when I can simply scroll that layer. The problem is that to get the effect on other objects besides the background they would also have to be on the scrolling layer.
Having the whole layer filled with the gradient, brought my frame rate down from 60, to 30 , doing it this way brings it back up to 50+.
Thanks again Dk