As others have said, it entirely depends on the purpose. Taking a stab in the dark here, I'd guess that this is a high school looking to have a refocusable special at
FOH, both for show usage and just to put frontlight on a talking head for assemblies. If that sounds like you, I'd actually take a look at the
City Theatrical AutoYoke. It's very straightforward, just a
Source Four mounted inside a moving chassis, and most people will add a
color scroller/changer and
DMX iris. This won't provide you with any "
flash and trash", but it will make it easy to put quality face-light anywhere on the
stage, and give you a wide range of colors. An
iris won't be as precise as shutters, but in my experience, there are very few situations where four blades of shutters are absolutely required, and programming them takes much longer than just dialing in an
iris. Additionally, these units don't require nearly as much maintenance as most other units, and they can be left on for extended periods of time without any detrimental effects - not that you should, but if you accidentally leave your AutoYoke on over the weekend, you're not going to have major problems like you would with an arc source. They're also relatively quiet, and they'll likely come in at a pretty good price
point, allowing you to invest in additional gear or infrastructure, such as the cabling you'll require to many any
FOH fixture work.
.
