In 2000, I was the lighting designer for the Fernando Ortega “Home” tour and I came across one of the worst church moving light “disasters” I have ever seen.
On a beautiful spring day in New Mexico I walked into the church where we were playing and saw that they had 40 moving lights hanging in the ceiling. I thought that I had hit the jackpot and was going to see if I could use some of their fixtures to augment my show.
When I asked the church's technical director if I could use some of his lighting fixtures, he just hung his head and said that he wished he could let me, but he explained that although the church was only a little over a year old, only one of the 40 moving fixtures worked. You see the lighting company that did the design and installation never told the church that they were going to need to service the moving lights on a regular basis.
Since the lights were hanging 50 feet above the floor, over pews, this was a problem. There was no catwalk for access, which meant that the only way to access the lights was to build a 45-foot-tall scaffolding tower.
In addition, each fixture used a $250 lamp, so the total cost to re-lamp the 40 fixtures was $10,000 for lamps—and this needed to be done every six months. That's roughly $30,000 or so a year when you add labor and scaffolding rental into the equation.
So after spending a half a million dollars on the lighting installation, they discovered that they were going to have to spend $30,000 a year in lighting system maintenance.
Why do I tell this story? This church, like many other churches, was sold on the merits of the system without having both the up-front costs, recurring maintenance costs, and the potential repair issues disclosed to them by the company that built the system.
Due diligence helps ensure proper selection
So what do you need to know before purchasing moving lights so you don't end up stuck in the same situation? First, a moving light is a tool, no more and no less. Purchasing a fixture that doesn't do what you need it to do is a waste of money, but to know what tool you need you have to know what you are going to do with it. Are you going to use your moving lights for beam looks, pattern projection, color wash, key light, backlight, or focusable specials?
Beam looks require you to have haze in the air for the beam to reflect off. Not every church is going to want or be able to use haze during a church service.
Pattern projection requires a surface that patterns can be projected on. This could be light colored walls, drape, or scenic pieces.
Purchasing a fixture that doesn’t do what you need it to do is a waste of money…. Are you going to use your moving lights for beam looks, pattern projection, color wash, key light, backlight, or focusable specials?
A color wash is usually from the front and is used to color the people and things on stage from the front. A backlight wash then has the color coming from behind the people and things on stage, putting them in a color silhouette.
Key light is the primary light on peoples' faces, generally coming from the front, and a focusable special is using a moving fixture as a spotlight to highlight a person or thing on stage. A focusable special also has the ability to be remotely re-focused to another position from the lighting console.
Knowing what you are going to use the fixture for is a big part in picking the correct fixture and determining how much you need to spend.
Crucial cost considerations
Next, you need to realize that a moving light purchase is very much a “you get what you pay for” proposition. The better the build quality, the better the light will look, the longer it will last, and the more that you will pay for it. Also, more features in a moving light drive the price up, as does a brighter light source.
I like a quote from Alf Sauve, media specialist at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta, Ga. He says, “The bitter taste of low quality remains long after the sweetness of low cost has dissolved.”
This is true, because many times choosing a lower cost fixture means not getting the correct tool for the job—and not having the correct tool keeps you from being effective. Picking the correct unit, even though it may be a bit more expensive on the front end, will save you money and headaches down the road, however, the up front fixture cost is not the only cost associated with a moving light. There are recurring costs, as well.
The primary recurring cost is lamp replacements in arc-lamped fixtures. Unlike incandescent lamps that burn out and just quit working, arc lamps have a finite service life, rated in hours, and are designed to be replaced when they hit the end of their service life—even if they are still burning. If the arc lamp isn't replaced, you run the risk of having the lamp shatter inside of the fixture, possibly damaging the reflector, heat shield, and electronics, not to mention filling the fixture with glass shards.
While running an arc lamp past its service life might save a little bit of money in the short term, if you have a lamp shatter it can cost you many times more in repairs to fix the damage. In addition, since arc lamps cost anywhere from $100 to $300 or more, it is important to have a rough idea of how many hours per week you plan on using the fixtures and the number of service hours the lamp is rated for. By dividing the lamp service hours by the hours of use per week you can calculate how many lamp changes you will make in a year. The number of lamp changes, the number of lamps needed, and their cost, will let you know how much per year you are going to spend keeping the moving lights running.
Along with lamp changes there will be some other general maintenance required, such as cleaning the lenses, gobo and color wheels, and cleaning the fans. While this general maintenance takes a bit of time, it can be a do-it-yourself project for someone with a bit of technical know how. All it takes is getting a bit of training from your equipment dealer on the proper procedure. However, if you don't do it yourself, you will need to have a service technician do it for you. This means one more item to plan and budget for each year.
Of course don't forget about the repairs that you will have to make. There is a saying in the lighting world that “it's not if the moving light will fail but when it will fail.” As one manufacturer's rep once told me, “When you cram electronic and mechanical components into the smallest space possible and add a light source that heats that space to oven temperatures, it's going to fail—we have just been able to extend the time between failures.”
“The bitter taste of low quality remains long after the sweetness of low cost has dissolved.”
Alf Sauve
Media Specialist, Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, Marietta, GA
This is true, moving lights today are more reliable than in years past, but there will be failures. Maybe not the first, second or third year you own them, but eventually you will have a problem that will take a service technician to fix. At this time you are going to spend at least a few hundred dollars making repairs.
Two all-important questions
While we have talked a bit about the lights themselves, there are two other questions you need to keep in mind when looking to purchase moving lights: The first is, do you have infrastructure in place that will support the fixtures? And the second is, how will you deal with the cost of programming the moving lights?
To use moving lights you must have the physical infrastructure to support their operation.:
Will your hang positions support the fixtures' weight (moving lights are much heavier than conventional fixtures)?
Do you have a data distribution system that can deliver control data to your fixtures?
Do you have constant power for your fixtures to plug into since they can't plug into dimmed lighting circuits?
And can your lighting console control moving lights?
The last cost we will discuss—and one that most people overlook—is the cost of programming. While many people see running moving lights as walking up to a moving light console and pushing a button, that button push that makes the lights go represents hours of time spent learning how to use a moving light console, as well as programming the lights to do what you want them to do. Although this cost may or may not equal real money, there is a definite cost of time because moving lights, regardless of how they are labeled, are not intelligent and will not move on their own. It is going to take someone a good deal of time to program the lights to move and change color and patterns, and it's not a one-time thing. Programing the fixtures will be an ongoing endeavor over the life of the system.
Many times after having this conversation on the costs of investing in moving lights, a church will become apprehensive about making a moving light purchase. This is good, because moving lights can be a great asset as long as you understand the expenses and ongoing maintenance associated with them and are willing to pay the cost. But if you are not prepared for the ongoing expenses or are unwilling to spend the money, moving lights can quickly go from a blessing to a curse. My advice: think it through and plan accordingly.
