Input please. I recently had a wedding where the venue mentioned two weeks prior to the event that the First Dances, Toasts and Dinner would occur in one room and the Dancing for the evening would take place in another room where a permanent bar area was (but no seating in this area). I've not run into this. Every event I've had, the dancing, toasts, special dances all happen in the same area as dinner so this was a bit of a surprise but I made it work. I use Soundswitch for my lighting software so that it's pre-programmed. For those of you familiar, only a small handful of my auto-loops had a very quick 3 second strobe woven in from time to time. It's minimal (because as you know a little strobe goes a long way). I was simply using it to add some extra creative movement beyond a snap and it was certainly not on every autoloop or anything.
The lighting had been up for a couple of hours and while I was doing sound check with the ceremony musician outdoors, the event planner comes to me complaining that she has a bartender with epilepsy and wants me to turn off any possible strobe or see what I can do. I told her it's all pre-programmed, the bride and groom paid for custom programmed lighting but that I would aim the lights more on the ceiling to ensure that it was less impactful on those tending bar. She was happy with that.
The dancing segment is in full swing and she comes up to me while I'm mixing and complains again and says to turn them off. Again, I can't stress enough. Any "strobe" effect was very minimal in duration and how often they occurred. Now, for those of your familiar with Soundswitch you know you cannot just "turn off that setting". You literally would have to do away with all lighting mid-event (which the B&G paid for). No matter how I tried to educate her in that fashion she kept saying she didn't want to be responsible for a medical emergency etc.
While I'm open to simply taking this special effect out entirely (like I said, it's minimal), I'm annoyed and frustrated with the venue because of two reasons:
1. I believe it to be incredibly irresponsible of the venue as an employer to place a person known to struggle with epilepsy behind the bar in the very area where they know lights will be changing, snapping or flashing or moving (if I had moving heads) to some or any degree. This gal seemed to refuse to see this. There had to be plenty of other locations or roles for this person to help in besides this kind of dance floor area.
2. The venue was the one who had mandated that the dance segment be in that specific area where the bar was. By the way, this was not due to a covid restriction. The dinner area was not spread out, though due to the guest list size I can see why they may have done this. However, if the venue wants the dancefloor where the bar is, don't put an epileptic there. That's like having an alcoholic tend bar all night long or someone who has been in prison for embezzlement to do your books. Probably not the best position for an individual. Plus, just "how much is too much" of an effect?? If no strobe is used, fine, but how could a dj know that color-snaps wouldn't have the same effect??
I encouraged her to communicate well in advance their expectation or unique situation to dj's. This way the B&G can get pulled into the situation and it can be figured out. If I had known well in advance I could easily have (and would have) accommodated by taking out any effect like that. However, in my opinion, It's unreasonable for a venue to take absolutely no responsibility in this situation (for where they place an epileptic individual), just fault the dj for things and then try to handle it mid-event.
Have any of you run into this? How did you handle it?
The lighting had been up for a couple of hours and while I was doing sound check with the ceremony musician outdoors, the event planner comes to me complaining that she has a bartender with epilepsy and wants me to turn off any possible strobe or see what I can do. I told her it's all pre-programmed, the bride and groom paid for custom programmed lighting but that I would aim the lights more on the ceiling to ensure that it was less impactful on those tending bar. She was happy with that.
The dancing segment is in full swing and she comes up to me while I'm mixing and complains again and says to turn them off. Again, I can't stress enough. Any "strobe" effect was very minimal in duration and how often they occurred. Now, for those of your familiar with Soundswitch you know you cannot just "turn off that setting". You literally would have to do away with all lighting mid-event (which the B&G paid for). No matter how I tried to educate her in that fashion she kept saying she didn't want to be responsible for a medical emergency etc.
While I'm open to simply taking this special effect out entirely (like I said, it's minimal), I'm annoyed and frustrated with the venue because of two reasons:
1. I believe it to be incredibly irresponsible of the venue as an employer to place a person known to struggle with epilepsy behind the bar in the very area where they know lights will be changing, snapping or flashing or moving (if I had moving heads) to some or any degree. This gal seemed to refuse to see this. There had to be plenty of other locations or roles for this person to help in besides this kind of dance floor area.
2. The venue was the one who had mandated that the dance segment be in that specific area where the bar was. By the way, this was not due to a covid restriction. The dinner area was not spread out, though due to the guest list size I can see why they may have done this. However, if the venue wants the dancefloor where the bar is, don't put an epileptic there. That's like having an alcoholic tend bar all night long or someone who has been in prison for embezzlement to do your books. Probably not the best position for an individual. Plus, just "how much is too much" of an effect?? If no strobe is used, fine, but how could a dj know that color-snaps wouldn't have the same effect??
I encouraged her to communicate well in advance their expectation or unique situation to dj's. This way the B&G can get pulled into the situation and it can be figured out. If I had known well in advance I could easily have (and would have) accommodated by taking out any effect like that. However, in my opinion, It's unreasonable for a venue to take absolutely no responsibility in this situation (for where they place an epileptic individual), just fault the dj for things and then try to handle it mid-event.
Have any of you run into this? How did you handle it?