The new thread on labeling gel

[SteveB]

One item that confuses the hell out of me. For those of you who said, "in the center, as I don't want to have to climb a ladder or bring it in to check what color it is...." -- You have heard of these things called "Dimmer Hookups and Channel Schedules", right? There's also this thing called a Light Plot. All three list the gel in each fixture. Just sayin'.... John Mckernon must be facepalming over this thread.

Mark, all that paperwork does is gets the color cut, framed and headed towards the units. Then someone doesn't pay attention and puts an R04 in a unit on 1E that is supposed to be an R304 and you wonder why you now have a spare frame of R304 in your hand and are missing an R04 for the 4th electric. Having it labeled so you can see it helps you find the error.

Humans being human are prone to error and it's just another method of helping to find and eliminate errors before they become problems.

 

[MPowers]

..........presumably Lee Filters because..........[/video]

Of course they're LEE. The swatch-book has a yellow cover and the label on the gel at 4:18 and Label on the shipping tube 4:50 all say LEE Filters!

As to why grease pencil not sharpie? We started marking when gel WAS gel. Magic markers had a tendency to wrinkle the gel and as no color lasted more than a few days at best, some lavenders and blues were often one show and done, change them every night at light check. Permanent marking simply wasn't needed then.

 

[soundguy99]

Then in that case it might be worth looking at getting a heat resistant sharpie or marker that would be a bit more permanent and resist the heat better.
As I said once I mark them from a fresh roll I don`t want those marks to come off, until I throw out the gel itself. I am in the process of trying to sift through a entire filing cabinet of different sizes, manufacture and color of gels, which some have been marked partially marked and no marked at all, and I am trying to go through and match them to different swatch books, between strand, rosco and lee, and I can tell you thats not fun, and after a few years down the road from now I don`t want to find my self doing this all over again.

 

[JChenault]

Then in that case it might be worth looking at getting a heat resistant sharpie or marker that would be a bit more permanent and resist the heat better.
As I said once I mark them from a fresh roll I don`t want those marks to come off, until I throw out the gel itself. I am in the process of trying to sift through a entire filing cabinet of different sizes, manufacture and color of gels, which some have been marked partially marked and no marked at all, and I am trying to go through and match them to different swatch books, between strand, rosco and lee, and I can tell you thats not fun, and after a few years down the road from now I don`t want to find my self doing this all over again.

Well
My personal philosophy on this is "if it's not labeled - it's trash' Life is too short to try and match gel colors.

As for grease pencils rubbing off, I typically find ( especially in the lavenders and blues ) that the color starts fading well before any china marker wears off. As for less fugitive colors, I have some cuts in my file folders over ten years and you can still see the china marker numbers.

 

[techieman33]

I've never had a problem with china marker or regular sharpie coming off. I usually use a white china marker on darker gels, and black sharpie on lighter gels. Stickers are bad bad bad though. Someone years ago labeled gel with small stickers and while they may have been fine for a while the glue has since dried out for the most part and they constantly fall off.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Label visible in the frame is incredibly useful in rep situations, or when taking a show on the road. Seeing the number of the gel in the frame opening saves time and frustration when trying to get a show in quick, especially if brass brads have been used to keep the frames shut.

But again, as long as you label it when you cut it, I'll be happy. In-frame is just personal preference. I'll allow Sharpie, but prefer china marker. Something about Sharpie solvents on gel doesn't seem good in my brain.


Of course, some people get too sassy.

 

[zmb]

This just occurred to me, but china marker shows up on well on every color. Standard black sharpie doesn't stand out well at all on darker blues, lavenders, and greens.