Light Minds Think Alike

People for the ethical demonstration of Selador

ETC Field Project Coordinator David Hilton discusses an important issue facing lighting designers:

There’s a tragedy occurring every day in this country – a tragedy that affects lighting designers and technicians alike. This tragedy is unfolding right in our backyards. I’ve personally seen it firsthand, and I struggle to mitigate its aftereffects. You may have been witness to these horrid events and didn’t even know it. The tragedy is simple: seeing a lighting demonstration of a product outside of its natural environment. The most egregious example of this, for the purposes of this blog, is Selador.

Lighting products, especially of the entertainment variety, are sensitive creatures. They are conscious of their surroundings and react very differently when taken from their natural environment. I have traveled the country far and wide and have seen time and time again people placing a Selador on trunnions four feet in front of a wall, and it sickens me. ‘Don’t they understand they aren’t even giving it a chance?’ I often think to myself. ‘Don’t they know how beautiful that light wants to look? How much it yearns to be back in a theater, hung in the air, lighting someone?’ The only thing that calms my spirit is the fact that these tragic demonstrations of the Selador product are indeed innocent. For years, people have taken other LED products and have shined them on a wall, which is what those fixtures were built to do. How could they know that Selador is so different?

As a man trying to perpetuate the ethical demonstrations of lighting products, I ask this: do you remember the first time you saw a Source Four? Was it on a floorplate pointed at a wall three feet in front of it? Sadly, some of you will say yes, but that is a tragedy of a different magnitude. For most people, the first time they saw a Source Four it was hung on a pipe in the air, and it was there, in all its natural beauty, that people first saw the beautiful, sculpted light pour out of the front of the fixture and hit the waiting stage below. It was there that someone placed a set piece or an actor and you saw in front of you the sheer quality of light at which it illuminated those objects. And it was there that the Source Four felt at home.

Selador and Source Four are similar in this way: they feel at home in the theater. Selador feels comfortable lighting people and objects on a stage. Placing them on the ground and shining them on a wall give them a hollow existence. And why would anybody want to hurt a Selador? All they want to do is play with you. Selador yearns to give designers the options of changing their top wash from rich ambers to subtle lavenders to brilliant magentas. It yearns to light an actor in a light that looks as natural as a tungsten source, then grins when it suddenly changes to moonlight blue. It knows the lighting designers in the audience are scratching their heads, wondering if there is some sort of a color changing device on a Fresnel. What’s even sadder about the tragedy of mis-demonstrating Selador is that the designers suffer as much as the Seladors... and they don’t even know it!

I’ve begun a campaign in the Western United States. This campaign is aimed at one thing: to save Seladors across the country from unnatural demonstrations. If Seladors want to show themselves off as a top wash, I say let them. If they want to show off their color-mixing and lensing capabilities by lighting an entire cyc, I say it’s their right to do so. If they want to light a human being in 3200k, then in 5600k, I say, go for it!

And ETC is behind me on this. We are increasing the opportunities to save Seladors and lighting designers alike from horrible demonstrations. Come check us out at tradeshows where different types of Seladors will be playing with each other. Make an effort to see a Selador demonstration by one of our qualified ETC Field Project Coordinators (FPCs). FPCs are located and travel throughout the country, and they’ve been specially trained on how to take care of Seladors, to make them shine their best. Or see us at the Selador Roadshow, a marketing event headed to a local college or university near you. You will not only see how Seladors behave in their natural environment, but you’ll get an opportunity to play with them and see which one you want to take home!

Help my efforts to end these psychotic wall demonstrations! Let us come together and finally put Seladors where they want and deserve to be!