Fight scenes, practicals, and safety

From a safety standpoint, if the lamp is going to be thrown around, dropped, or whatever, I would only do this using low voltage lighting, NOT 120v. My concern is what if something internal gets damaged during the fight scene. It's fine that it'll be off during the fight, but it would be tragic if the next time it was next turned on (by actor, tech, or whoever) if there was suddenly 120 VAC on the metal parts of the lamp. Even if you do use 12v, I'd be concerned about returning the lamp to normal service after the show.

-Fred
 
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From a safety standpoint, if the lamp is going to be thrown around, dropped, or whatever, I would only do this using low voltage lighting, NOT 120v. My concern is what if something internal gets damaged during the fight scene. It's fine that it'll be off during the fight, but it would be tragic if the next time it was next turned on (by actor, tech, or whoever) if there was suddenly 120 VAC on the metal parts of the lamp. Even if you do use 12v, I'd be concerned about returning the lamp to normal service after the show.

-Fred

One thought on that - Use a grounded plug on the lamp, not a typical 2 blade lamp plug. Then be very sure all the metal parts on the lamp are well bonded to that ground. That should prevent voltage on the metal parts of the lamp. A GFCI wouldn't hurt either.

Though I'd rather go with 12V anyway!
 
Got the same problem.. did some one really tried this?

Well, I can tell you what we ended up doing. We set up the table lamp with a low voltage bulb run on a wireless dimmer. We made a "sock" of sorts, that slipped over the lamp just in case it broke, and we had a fairly deep pile carpet on the floor under the desk. I believe that over the course of the run of the show we only actually smashed one lamp, and we had a couple that blew, but for e most part they survived pretty well. Helped that that lamp shade and carpet absorbed most of the impact from the fall.
 

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