ChurchProduction.com: More than a few churches that I’ve visited have a set of moving lights piled in a corner that no longer function. There are a variety of reasons for this: churches fail to recognize that unlike static fixtures the complexity of moving lights with all the mechanical moving parts means that they are going to break --- something they fail to budget time or money for. Or, in trying to save money, they invest in low-quality fixtures, which often means that they are going to break far sooner and more often. But another reason is a failure to perform basic preventative maintenance, which causes lights to fail sooner than they should, and can cause repair costs to be far higher than they should.
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There must be a ton of churches and educational facilities with equipment that would be awesome to use, but were never kept up to functional standards. This is such a same because there is so much in the way of church lighting, I have seen a few church-lighting designers who really make a show happen in these spectacular venues with LEDs and moving lights. A church just needs to know to incorporate moving light maintenance in whatever functioning budget to use to bring people in. There probably doesn’t even need to be someone there full time to handle the equipment. (Though it would be useful for large churches with more tech savvy sermons and celebrations to have a person on staff who knows how to keep the equipment usable.) The instructions on the recommended items are good ones, but if a space does not commit to having the staff they need to fix the equipment then there isn’t really much that will be done.
In high school, it frustrated me to no end that we could not use any of the four clay paky spot fixtures that we had in stock for any show. Even if we could get them to turn on, we could not trust their operation enough to use them even for a one evening event. The school laid out the money for a single capital purchase of the moving lights, but not maintenance or upkeep costs were factored into a budget anywhere, and the administration could not be convinced of the necessity of repairing the lights, confused as to why they had to spend money that was not in the original funding request. I don’t blame the moving lights for not working, nor us for not being able to fix them, but rather that no one had any idea that the cost of a moving light is not the cost of a moving light. Equipment doesn’t just cost what it takes to buy it, it costs space, upkeep and training to use it.
My grandmother would always tell me that products with all the gadgets are not always the best ones to buy. Someone could give her a fully loaded car and she would trade it in for her base line Toyota because she hates all the gadgets for fear they will break. I have never really shared the same opinion as her, but I find it interesting that organization are paying thousands of dollars to let the equipment collect dust. Some of these moving lights can cost upwards of $10,000 and to get them serviced is pennies compared to that. If someone is going to make an initial investment, it is key to budget out the money before buying to ensure proper maintenance. I am a student at CMU and was loading in a show this past week. I was hanging sharpie washes and was happy to see that they were stored in a case with about 5 inches of foam to protect them.
At my high school we managed to purchase one moving light for in-house use in my sophomore year, which we often used for effects and relied on heavily for more intricate lighting shows like the dance show we put on every May. It had problems a couple of times during my time in high school, which always meant catastrophe for whatever we needed it for. My technical director was the only one who was qualified to open it up and perform maintenance on it, but she was often so overworked that the maintenance would take a backseat for longer than we were usually comfortable with, but we had no choice. Since we also didn't have the extra money to buy a replacement, none of the students on the crew were allowed to fiddle with the moving light to try to fix it, for fear that we would damage it further. It really demonstrated to me how important it is to have someone who is available and qualified to perform maintenance on important equipment and just how important maintenance is to allow your equipment to last a long time.
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