You’ve Been Warned!
For instance, laundry soap may have a disclaimer saying two things. “We don’t guarantee that our product will work effectively with all washing machines or stains.” But what they do guarantee is that it will cause your body serious harm if ingested. Heck, some fast food places have fancy disclaimers which inform you that consuming their processed mystery meat will have little nutritional value, so you should buy larger portions. Now with the advent of Clay Paky’s Sharpy lighting fixture, these disclaimers are actually prevalent and are serious. These tiny fixtures emit an amazingly bright light beam. Due to some serious optical engineering, they have developed a way for a 200W light bulb to blind you if you look straight into it. I’m talking retina damage. These things will auto-close your head’s personal shutters in record time. They come with a disclaimer. They actually tell the buyer that their fixture will burn holes in fabrics. That the beam emitted from this light will burn a performers skin. Right. Who’s going to believe this jargon from a 200W fixture?
Well, now we are being tempted. Being rock ‘n’ roll guys, a few of my friends decided to take it upon themselves to test the Sharpy’s disclaimers. Sure enough, if you put one of these three feet from a sharks tooth scrim, it will melt a light beam-sized hole through it in five minutes. Impressive. Next, they put a Sharpy three feet away from a Spanset, those cloth and fiber slings our industry uses constantly to attach heavy trusses to the rigging motors. It took 55 minutes, but the Sharpy melted the Spanset into some goo. (Advice for people who don’t own Gak flex: Start buying.) These fixtures will be among the most widely used items hung from a truss in decades. And their disclaimers don’t lie.
Do NOT…
But some new fixtures come with so many disclaimers that it’s really impossible to use the fixture. Last month, I took a serious look at a new LED moving light that a company is peddling. It was small, fast and basically another replica of the new breed of mini moving LED wash lights. Of course, this nameless fixture ships with a disclaimer containing a list of a dozen sentences, all of which start with the capitalized words “DO NOT”. I used to pay little attention to these, but with this advent of new technology, I figured I should give them two minutes of my time. After all, I ignored the Sharpy manual until some friends informed me that their disclaimer was one grail I should adhere to.
The first thing they tell the user is to never open this product unless instructed to. They are covering their backsides for times when some amateur tech decides to fix it and causes more harm than good. Unfortunately, moving lights break. And the techs have to fix them. Even amateur techs. They may call for advice but be unable to get any help over the phone. And road guys don’t have weekends off like the service people working in the manufacturers shops. Instead, the road guys have LDs who berate them when stuff is broken. For some crazy reason, they demand that all the lighting fixtures work properly, even on weekends. This particular light sells for under 1,000 clams. If I overnight it back and forth to your factory to repair, it will cost me half of the fixture’s value. And that’s if the place isn’t in China.
More Disclaimers
Disclaimer #2 is a beauty. “Do not point this product towards any surface closer than 16 feet.” Okay, this means I cannot use this light on any show that does not have at least a 23-foot trim height. Lighting any set pieces with this LED source could easily damage them, and I don’t want to assume this huge risk. Using this LED product to illuminate any soft goods would be a bad move. I have visions of another great Chicago fire caused by these silly lights striping the cyc at a downtown theater.
Disclaimer #3 tells us not to aim the fixture towards the sun. The lens can concentrate the solar energy and cause internal heat problems. This makes common sense. It definitely rules out floor use of this product on one of my tours. I would fear some sort of simultaneous combustion could occur at an outdoor venue and destroy everything in its radius.
Disclaimer #4 says not to look at the light when it is on. Mind you, this is a very small LED product with standard wattage LEDs and lenses. Nowhere near as bright as the majority of LED fixtures on the market. Nonetheless, they are telling me I am forbidden to use it as a front light source, whether on the floor of my stage OR on a front truss when my trim height is low.
Disclaimer #5 warns us not to touch the fixture when it is on, since it will be very hot. It’s an LED fixture, mind you. I leave the fixture on for 15 minutes while I have lunch. I come back and grab it everywhere. Not a chance of getting burned.
Disclaimer #6 tells me I need a minimum of 50 centimeters of space between the fixture and anything else, as the light “needs to breathe.”
That means I need 20 inches of free space surrounding each side of the fixture.
Do not mount this light in any set piece or try and use it as a truss toner.
Don’t even think of jamming a bunch of these together to make a really cool pod of pixel-mapping genius. Try another manufacturer’s toy if you wish to use your imagination.
Disclaimer #7 commands me not to operate this product where dust, excessive heat, water or humidity may affect it. I think it would be wise to ban this fixture in all humid southern states, as well as Arizona and Vegas. There’s gonna be an inevitable accident.
Disclaimer #8 specifically tells us not to pick up this lightweight fixture by the head. I understand their concern. But the fixture has no handles. And I’m sure that every tech and stagehand will carry more than one at a time. Will have to keep a keen eye out to police future handlers from doing this from now on.
When I add up all these disclaimers, I wonder to myself if I shouldn’t just put this fixture back in the case and forget it. The disclaimers lead me to wonder if this fixture will just fall apart from everyday use. But then I take one last look at the list price. This particular fixture sells for one-third of its’ competitor’s equivalent line. If I rent it out for the same exact price, it’s paid for in no time. Since it’s a new LED product, in all probability, it will be outdated by newer cool stuff next year. And, just perhaps, if I pay serious attention to all the disclaimers, it will last that long and I can throw it out when it breaks.
