Gel Organization

[wemeck]

How do you all organize your Gels?
We use to have a very serious problem here with the Gel room. The Gel room was an absolute wreck. Our crew would go in there and dig in piles to find the Gel and then cut whatever size they needed. So we had full sheets, and full sheet minus whatever size was needed when that sheet was discovered. It took a partner and me months, but we organized the freshly labeled gels into two categories, Cut Gels, and Full Sheets. All the cut Gels were filed into a four draw file cabinet.

Well 12 years later! We out grew the cumbersome use of a file cabinet and we now use a large plywood box that has masonite/Luan file folder dividers that are the interior width of the box. Each divider has a Gel number and all the cut Gels are put in front of the divider. It works! But I was wondering what all of you do.

I forgot to mention that we have two large ply wood boxes. The first one is for Lee Gels and the file-channels for the divider is made to hold up to a scoop size Cut Gels. The second plywood box is for Rosco, and the file-channels are wide enough to handle 8" fresnels size Cut Gels.

[MagliteL13]

We have a large cabinent with slots and file folders with standard cut sizes in them. The file folders are all in order of number with the 300s scattered in. We also have a seperate rack with larger "cyc light size" cuts and full sheets (again, sorted by number).

Jeremy Lyon
Technician at The McAnich Arts Center

[Jo-JotheSoundDog]

We have a filing cabinet for the 6" and smaller cuts, another for the 9" and larger cuts. And then our ME has created some system of using the old Roscoe flat boxes, tape, a couple of altoid tins, some epoxy, and some things I believe he stole from Nasa to construct this full sheet organizer. The guy thinks he's McGuyver(I hope people still get that reference).

[cruiser]

We have a storage system similar to a bookcase/pigeon hole system. All uncut gels are on rolls, and the rolls are placed in their pigeon holes according to their number.

Gels that have been cut are placed in a 4 draw filing cabinet, a draw for each brand and then each cut number has its own file.

[producer]

We have a very small inventory of gels and we use accordian file folders to organise them. However, NONE of the technicians "feel like" sorting through the MESS of the gels that comes from lazyness. Is there any low budget system of sorting gels that is mess-resistant and can expand easily to include additional gel colours?

[Toul]

We have several things going for us.

First, we rarely have uncut gel unless someone has recently made a shopping trip. We cut pretty much everything when it comes in the door, because that's when we need it.

Our lighting inventory requires only two stock sizes. The Altman 6" cut and the ETC 4 1/2 (?) cut.

After cutting, we put all the gels either into the lights or into the file. It's a box with folders in it. Each folder has a Roscolux number at the top, and that corresponds to the gel that goes inside. We have one box for the small size and one for the big size.

Also: something that I've noticed some people don't do is to notate on the gel itself what color it is. This goes a long way when you need to sort your color after the event is over, especially if you are using similar colors in your lighting rig. If you use color from different manufacturers, use a letter and a number...otherwise you can just use a number. "R46," then, would be Roscolux 46. This can be done out on the edge with a Sharpie or right in the middle with a grease pencil. At first I thought that drawing a big 46 in the middle of the gel would make a giant number-shape shadow in the light, but that was a young naive thing for me to think.

[yvfd82t]

We keep ours in to dressers and it works (for now).

[JahJahwarrior]

my youth group uses only two sizes (not sure of the inch sizes...our Leko's and Fresnels use the same size, and we have Par 64's) and we, right now, only have one uncut sheet. We have a large box, like a rubbermaid box, that says many things on top, most promonently is "GEL BOX" (it also has a warning around the lid that says something like "don't tip if there are clamps in here!" because oncec I had lots of c clamps in it, someone moved it and left it tilted for aw hile...several gels were crumpled up) it has many frames in the bottom, then the large Par gels, all grouped in colors (no seperators or anything though...just lots of gels) and then there are the fresnel gels, again arragned in groups based on color. works for us, but we don't have tons of ighting.

[yvfd82t]

Well you should get another box for all of your clamps so no one messes up what gels you have. Also what kind of frames do you have, the metal, or the cardboard??

[Radman]

Check out the post about the lighting toolbox. Tht has drawers for gels, clamps, frames, etc.