I cringe at even asking this, but...

[NHStech]

We are doing Wizard of Oz at our school, and I in no uncertain terms made it clear to the director I would not be lifting any human off the ground via our fly system.
And yet, he is, shall we say, persistent (Okay, a pain in the backside to work with, but I love him). He sent me the attached picture.View attachment balloon.pdf
It APPEARS as if the school is just using its fly system to raise the basket. I am assuming no tricks, just straight up in the air.
Which brings up the question: Is it EVER acceptable to raise a kid offstage using your counterweight system, whether it is in a basket, harness, or anything?

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Now I'm not a certified rigger, but my answer is most certainly "no", as I don't think standard counterweight fly systems are ever (or if they are, very rarely) designed with the safety ratio necessary to safely fly humans.

 

[derekleffew]

...Which brings up the question: Is it EVER acceptable to raise a kid offstage using your counterweight system, whether it is in a basket, harness, or anything?

This question is probably better directed to the manufacturer of your counterweight fly system: JRClancy, Secoa, H&H, Tiffin, ProTech, etc.

Hint: They'll say "No."!

 

[gafftaper]

I have to admit that many years ago, when I was a young dumb hotshot drama teacher, I did it. (Sorry WhatRigger?, I admit it was REALLY dumb and I attempt to make up for it now with this post).

Looking back on it now, it's the most dangerous thing I've ever allowed a student to do on stage and I would NEVER do it again. Let's just ignore the fact that you have a kid 14 feet up in the air suspended from a counterweight system not designed to lift humans. We can ignore the rigging math about loads and the damage you will likely do to your fly system (I bent two battens, real good). Let's ignore the fact that he's in a basket (probably made of wood) by students, not a professional flying effects company. Then let's Ignore the fact that the kid has no safety harness or lifeline to protect him if the basket fails and he falls. Let's ignore the OSHA statistics that say he's very likely to suffer some sort of permanent life altering injury if not death at that height. Let's ignore the fact that if you screw up and the kid dies you are going to get sued, get the district sued, and loose your job (possibly your career as a technician... who is going to hire you after this?).

Let's just think about the counter weighting issue. In order to lift that much weight you have to purposely create an arbor heavy runaway situation. Lets say your actor weighs 150 pounds and the 2x4 and plywood basket is at least another 50. Now you want this thing to fly so it should zip up a bit right? So you have to counterweight the arbor at least 250lbs out of balance, to get the basket to take off. Now consider the set change back stage where you bring that empty basket down into position. I had my 6 largest stage hands backstage falling over each other pulling on the ropes to just pull the basket down into position. That's WAY more stress than your system is designed to take.

What happens if your hand break fails? What happens if one of those kids pulling on a rope slips and the arbor runs away crashing down on your crew?

It's a nightmare, don't do it.

Give your director this message from one of the top rigging experts in the industry Bill Sapsis

A message from Uncle Bill

What is it about the holidays that cause normal people to lose their minds?

Beginning in late October I start getting calls from community group technical directors, church deacons and high school music teachers who want to fly an actor in their holiday show. Invariably, the first thing out of their mouths, after they tell me what they want to do, is "but we don't have much money so it has to be cheap." These are intelligent, responsible people. People who probably pay their taxes on time, get regular dental check-ups and wear their seatbelts even when driving just two blocks away. What on earth would lead these fine upstanding citizens to believe that suspending their children from little ropes and wires over a stage for cheap was a good idea?

"We're only going to be lifting her 6' in the air" they say. "Fine", I respond. "Why don't you stand on top of a 6' stepladder, jump off and land on the base of your spine to see what it feels like. Then tell me if you want your kid in that position." Sometimes that gets their attention.

I hear it all. They want no supervision. They want me to sell them some rope, a pulley and a cheap harness and turn them loose on the Peter Pans and flying angels of the world. I have the same answer for each and every one of them. No.

People think that just anything tied around a person will work as a flying harness. They trot off to Home Depot looking for a 'safety harness'. The ever-knowledgeable salesperson (at Home Depot?) simply stares at them of course, not having a clue. That's when they call me. When I explain that all I carry are Fall Arrest or climbing harnesses, they ask if they can alter one of those. I tell them no and explain why these harnesses will not work; the harnesses aren't designed for this type of stunt nor do the manufacturers warrant their use in this manner. Then I recommend that they talk to one of the companies that makes flying harnesses. "Those people are too expensive", I'm told. Oh. What do you think that 6' fall is going to do to your kid's spine? Is it worth putting them in a wheelchair for life because you were too cheap to get the right harness? Some of the parents even listen at this point. For the others I move onto my next argument.

Experience. There's a difference between the bookkeeper that volunteers to run the fly rail once a year at the church pageant and the professional who's been running a fly system for years. That difference is, among other things, focus. Let's look at a possible scenario. Poindexter, the volunteer is running the rail. He is 17 and a senior in high school. He has a girlfriend, and she just walked backstage to chat during a rehearsal. Is this kid giving his total attention to the show or is he showing off for his girlfriend? Go ahead; think back to when you were 17. Right. He's more easily distracted because he's in unfamiliar surroundings and he doesn't really understand the repercussions of a mistake. Amy, the professional, does know what happens to someone dropped from 6' or run into the wall. She also knows that she can wait and take her boyfriend out for donuts after the rehearsal.

The professional also knows when to call it quits. When a flying effect works, amateur directors tend to act like they invented it all by themselves. They want to do it everywhere and all the time. Flying is an extremely tiring job, both for the performer and the technician. You've got to know when to draw the line and stop working before someone gets hurt. It's also smart to understand that not everyone in the cast has to fly. Cap'n Hook, played by somebody's paunchy dad, never looks good careening around on a wire.

Eventually I get through to most of these folks and they either call in a professional or don't do the gag. But I'm willing to bet there's plenty of others who don't bother to call and are blithely flinging their kids around a stagehouse. If you happen to know anyone like that let him or her know just how foolish their actions are and try to get them to stop. It'll be your good deed for the week.

From netHEADS 006
Or his book HEADS! & Tales

With what I know now, if I were in your situation I would do the following (in order).
1) Give the director all this information above.
2) Appeal to the principal and explain the dangers of the situation.
3) Let's call the district's risk management office and/or insurance people and have them assess the situation.
4) Get the parent involved. Tell the parent about the dangerous stunt your director wants done to their child.
4) Tell the director I won't do it you'll have to fire me. Yes I would totally go to the wall against doing this today. It's THAT dangerous.
5) Give the director's home phone number to What_Rigger? He'll be happy to call and rip the director a new one with a few choice words on how stupid this is.

There are some interesting SAFE alternative ideas in this thread and this thread.

P.S. The CB staff is watching this thread VERY closely. Any posts encouraging a dangerous do it yourself solution will be deleted.

 

[Footer]

Can a counterweight fly system be used to fly people? Yes. Can YOU use a counterweight fly system to fly people? NO.

Flying companies such as Hall, ZFX, and Foy will use a counterweight system to fly people. However, they first inspect the entire system. They usually lock down a batten and use it to secure other rigging that actually lifts. Rarely do they actually lift a person with a counterweight system.

Here is what you need to tell whoever is dumb enough to do this:
The biggest reason for this is counterweight systems are always designed to work in balance. When flying a person you introduce two things to the system. First, you are either going to operate the system pipe heavy or arbor heavy. The operators are going to have to work hard to bring the basket in leading to a very unsafe condition on the rail and overhead. When the person is loaded up, they will then have to work hard to keep the person in the air and safely lower them. When the person unloads they will then have to work even harder in order to keep the arbor from crashing to the ground. Added to that, counterweight syems and rope locks are not designed to be run in this fashion. There are ways around this but those are way outside the scope of what anyone in a high school should be doing.

Second, you introduce swing into the system. When a person loads and unloads, they will make the lineset swing. Professional flying companies do a lot to prevent and stop this. When the batten starts swinging, you run the risk of it crashing into other battens, getting tangled into other battens, and possibly knocking things loose causing them to fall on the stage (such as lights).

So yes, its easy to do. Attach a basket... fly it out... However, there are about a hundred different ways something could go wrong and someone could get seriously injured or killed. I don't want to see this posted on our news section with how a student got killed or injured because someone thought it would be fun to fly someone in this way.

 

[visagegyc]

"...I in no uncertain terms made it clear to the director I would not be lifting any human off the ground via our fly system."

Stick to your guns. Then, follow up with creative ideas to make it LOOK something like someone is flying. Something like a slightly dimensional scenic piece flown/tracked laterally backed by a reasonably elevated rolling platform (with safety factors, like a rail to hang onto!) that the actor stands on as everything "floats" toward the wing and offstage... Takes some coordination, and may seem cheesy of not done just right, but whatever happened to supsension of disbelief? Do we REALLY expect the audience to think that guy is made of straw?

 

[avkid]

What happens if your hand break fails?

Rope locks are not brakes, and should not be used as such.

 

[gafftaper]

Rope locks are not brakes, and should not be used as such.

Actually Phil, while you are right that you should never use them as a break to slow the progress of the rope, I purposely refer to them as breaks and not locks. To me, lock implies that it is LOCKED and can't move. In reality it's a friction break that slows the movement of the rope, and hopefully, provides enough friction to prevent it from moving again. Either term you use, remember that a lineset is never 100% secured by the use of the "rope locks" or "hand breaks".

 

[Les]

Flying companies such as Hall, ZFX, and Foy will use a counterweight system to fly people. However, they first inspect the entire system. They usually lock down a batten and use it to secure other rigging that actually lifts.

Exactly. I've seen this done, and the inspection is one of the very first things they do, right after grabbing a cup of coffee and unloading their roadcases. I can also attest that securing the batten(s) isn't something an untrained individual could do safely. It took the professional FOY rigger several hours to secure an electric winch batten to the top of a 1/4 fly loft.

 

[cprted]

Excellent advice from everyone already in this thread. Another point I would raise to your director is, while the picture looks good, you don't actually know how the basket is being raised. I would hope that one of the companies already mentioned was involved in the effect. We just had an arena tour of Wizard of OZ come through, the Foy roadcases literally took up half of a 53' trailer.

 

[DuckJordan]

Also break down the costs for him, to do the effect professionaly $25,000. To do it on your own and not nearly as safe, $100 for basket material plus cable to attach bucket to lineset now add in the cost of said basket breaking and the actor falling through breaking their spine, their arms and any other bone you can think of $350,000 then also add in the cost if the batten bends or locks up add another $3,000-4,000. Then add in the costs of your director being fired for it lets say if he gets paid 75k a year and hes planning on working 20+ years longer $1,500,000.

Lets add that all together

Pro Riggers: $25,000

Your own way: $1,854,100


So whats cheaper? your way, or the pro way?

 

[Les]

Good point Duck, but your numbers are a little off.

to do the effect professionaly $25,000.

Actually, that's a little high. For a simple lifting effect, it would probably only come to a few thousand. I emphasize 'only' because it is a small price to pay for life safety and peace of mind.

Also, not to sound shallow, but you also pay for their really good insurance in the extremely unlikely event that something does happen.

add in the cost of said basket breaking and the actor falling through breaking their spine, their arms and any other bone you can think of $350,000

Way higher. You'd be looking in the millions, most likely.

Then add in the costs of your director being fired for it lets say if he gets paid 75k a year and hes planning on working 20+ years longer $1,500,000.

Sadly, this is a little on the high side.

That said, I do get your point, and even though the numbers were a little off you make a valid argument.

 

[NHStech]

Actually Phil, while you are right that you should never use them as a break to slow the progress of the rope, I purposely refer to them as breaks and not locks. To me, lock implies that it is LOCKED and can't move. In reality it's a friction break that slows the movement of the rope, and hopefully, provides enough friction to prevent it from moving again. Either term you use, remember that a lineset is never 100% secured by the use of the "rope locks" or "hand breaks".

Now, this is interesting, as I have been told by the gentleman I replaced to use the handbreak to slow down the rope, so as to prevent rope burns and slivers (hemp at the time, but no longer) on your hands. Comments?

 

[NHStech]

Excellent advice from everyone already in this thread. Another point I would raise to your director is, while the picture looks good, you don't actually know how the basket is being raised. I would hope that one of the companies already mentioned was involved in the effect. We just had an arena tour of Wizard of OZ come through, the Foy roadcases literally took up half of a 53' trailer.

I would hope so too, and that is why I said it "appears." Not the most telling of pictures, so we don't know.

Thanks to all of you for your posts. This gives me a lot to work with. I will definitely stick to my guns and research other technical means of giving the appearance of flying. (Research meaning probably looking here for other threads or posting some how to's?)

 

[LXPlot]

A similar thing was actually done a few years ago at my school. We lifted "Peter Pan" of the ground in a production of the same name, and everything turned out alright. However, we had hired a professional company to set it up, and we paid a pretty penny for it. Secondly, it was a "teacher musical," so the lead character was a teacher and not student. Even so, it was not worth the large amount of time which had been put into it.

Tell your director that it just isn't plausible. He may argue, but you need to stress that it's dangerous for so many different reasons, would take a huge amount of labor to set up, and an equal large amount of labor to run efficiently during the show.

If you want a better way to do it, I recently saw a production of "Wizard of Oz" where the characters in the hot air ballon left stage, then a very small (maybe 3 feet by 1 ft) model of a balloon was moved onstage by a rope system (they had it set up to move across the stage on invisible string like a traveler curtain might.)

Edit: I just remembered a good example of how hard and dangerous something like this can be. The new Spider Man musical has tons of professionals and a huge budget trying to do a similar thing to you, and they have had tons of failures and a few injuries. And their professionals.

Regardless of how you do it, lifting a kid in the air with a counterweight system is a terrible idea.

 

[avkid]

Now, this is interesting, as I have been told by the gentleman I replaced to use the handbreak to slow down the rope, so as to prevent rope burns and slivers (hemp at the time, but no longer) on your hands. Comments?

If you're so out of weight that things are moving out of control there are obviously bigger problems.

 

[cprted]

Now, this is interesting, as I have been told by the gentleman I replaced to use the handbreak to slow down the rope, so as to prevent rope burns and slivers (hemp at the time, but no longer) on your hands. Comments?

You're wearing your ropes out and you're in a situation where you have tacit permission to operate lines faster than you can safely control with hands/arms increasing the possibility of a runaway.

Want to prevent rope burn and slivers? Use gloves.

 

[gafftaper]

Now, this is interesting, as I have been told by the gentleman I replaced to use the handbreak to slow down the rope, so as to prevent rope burns and slivers (hemp at the time, but no longer) on your hands. Comments?

No, echoing what has been said, if you can't control it while wearing gloves you are either way out of weight or you are operating to fast. Either way it's operator error and a dangerous situation. If you use the break/lock to slow the rope you can potentially damage both the rope and the break/lock.

The only time you should really let something move fast on a counterweight system is if it's a light weight drop... which you can easily slow with gloves on.

Whenever you work on my fly rail I want that arbor to slowly coast the last few feet until it gently kisses when it hit's bottom. You crash the arbor into the top or bottom on my crew and you are going into retraining, because you let it get out of control. An out of control lineset is deadly. Flat out Deadly it doesn't ask questions it just kills people.

As for the cost of hiring a professional to do the show we hired Hall Associates for a pretty simple Peter Pan production last year and it cost $5000 plus travel expenses. The actual cost varies depending on where you are and the number and difficulty of the flights you want done.

If you hire a pro for Oz you can have flying witches, flying monkeys, AND the hot air balloon.

 

[kiwitechgirl]

Flying by Foy have Wizard of Oz packages available as a "standard" kind of thing....lots of info here. I did WoO in the UK a few years ago with a flying system from Foys and would not have done it any other way.

 

[erosing]

Cost/Benefit of flying I have always looked at like this:

Location: Where are you located? Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Vegas, etc. and their vicinities, it's not worth doing unless your a college and you want your students to see what it's like to work with them (see if they can guest lecture a group or two as well!), or if you have a large amount of money to burn. Smaller cities, cities without a large theatre atmosphere (at least one without a heavy amount of flying effects). will see more benefits from such things.

Audience: Who's your target? Adults will get a kick out of it, as will little kids, the teenager group is probably more like half to a third will probably care enough to enjoy it. What is your capacity to sell ratio? If you are barely getting people in now, you don't have the funds to waste, if you're pulling in enough that you profit already but not as much as you could, keep reading.

Competition: This partly goes back to location, but also one must think of other big shows (concerts, movie openings, other large productions, elections, etc.) that will be going on at the same time. If there's a lot going on a flying effect may not draw any more than normal of a crowd to make up or exceed the expense.

Media: Can you play the media? If you have the exposure and you don't do a flying effect every year (show), then playing those cards and giving the media the exposure about something really cool happening now, will get you a bigger draw.

Budget: What's your budget? If it all goes towards an effect and every other aspect of the show blows, well you're not going to get much help from media or word of mouth. The rest of the production should be exemplary BEFORE you start adding (and paying big money) for special things (think renting a G.MA for a plot of 20 par cans that go up and down twice - senseless right).

Profit: How much do you foresee making (avg. profit per production) without the flying effect factored in? If it's enough to barely cover the cost of the effect and nothing else, I wouldn't do it unless you can get significantly more people in. If you need to make as much money as possible, forego the flying effect. Most importantly, if you cannot afford to do the effect according to what your average profit per production is you should not be doing the effect (loosing $200 on a show is bad, loosing $3-4k is really bad).

Cost: Find out what the effect is going to cost, how much is: 1 show, 1 weekend, two weekends, three weekends, 4 weekends? If you can do it great, if not, I'm sorry.



Magic formula for the absolutely desperate: If you really can't let the idea go, open the show weekend 1 and get great reviews, let the media (and everyone else) know (keep it as secret as possible until you make an announcement at the end of opening night) that you're doing a huge flying effect closing weekend that, 'completely changes the artistic direction of the show.' Having already hired the pros and set it up for them to come in (contact them months in advance so they can get everything spec'd, measured, and checked ahead of time and just have to come in and set it all up) and do the effect for your closing weekend. If you have enough of a crowd and hype (with a big enough venue to hold it all), you'll make money. But, the rest of your show has to be excellent to get that amount of media and hype from it, or have a LOT of friends each having a LOT of different friends.



Sorry about the amount of parentheses, I've had an infatuation for them recently, they are very addictive.