LIFT sept 16 notes & thanks

[djlace]

Thank you very much to all those who attended our event "LIFT" on September 16th at the maritime hall. It was a complete success and we are very grateful to all of you who gave our company (816) a chance. I promised all who spoke to me during the course of the night that I would publish notes and here they are. I think we are a little different than many other event outfits due to the fact that we are also involved in show technology development and have design and fabrication facilities, so these notes may also be helpful to other event companies.

DJS:
As you may know, Although Paul Masterson is big in Europe we were the first to bring him to Vancouver and that's always an additional risk for any event producers. I'm so happy he rocked the room. Our own Jaspa, James brown and Jesse also all did great...but I knew they would. Jesse gets extra props, he opened and then went on to VJ all night. *__*

Sound:
I build club sound systems but I'd rather use a sound company for live events. I was very happy to see that most people did notice the difference in sound quality that a concert scale rig can provide and I assure you we will always maintain such level of quality. By renting an oversize system and running it a 75% power we were able to avoid any distortion and still fill the room properly. It's twice the cost, but worth every penny IMHO. It also looked big and I like that too. I want more. :)

Keep in mind that regardless of what sound system you put in a space like the Maritime hall, it's only going to sound great when the room is half full or more. It was a bit washy at first but once the room was full it rocked. It would help if we could fly the top end but that room won't allow it.

At the beginning and end of any large function, there will always be a certain amount of reverberation and slap back and an associated loss of clarity. I'm working on the acoustics issue. It's more of a fine detail, but definitely something I want to address. I just have to sit down and work out the math.

Lighting/visuals:
We like techno club darkness and contrast. We said we would keep disco lighting low and concentrate on video visuals to stay in the 21 century. People appreciated that, and liked the dark club feel and trippy video projected over the DJ. Our ultimate goal is to do what I attempt during my live shows, that is, try and make the entire space behind the act disappear into a cinema 180 type environment.

So we only used a few DMX lights and don't plan on really expanding on that for the stage itself. We do however plan on looking at DMX controlled environment lighting around the foyer and LED color strobing. For video we used 4 high output projectors, created a "white" fabric castle like stage and projected real time 3d visuals generated by Jesse using our proprietary MidividGPU visual software.

I didn't think the projectors were powerful enough. They were 2500 lumens which is actually pretty powerful, and it looked alright but I didn't achieve the full cinema effect I wanted. We really had to oversaturate the video system output to get a lot of color intensity on screen. Damn Photons. When Jesse created objects of high contrast though it looked great. And the fact that he was creating raw computer imagery in real time in response to the music created a cohesive experience. I really think it's important for the VJ to constantly react to the music (VJs who play DVD loops bore me). Still brightness was an issue.

The room is 84 feet deep and I think you need at least 4000 lumens to get a theater feel, and that's just an estimate in my head, I'm probably low. Makes sense, it's the size of a theater. So I'm going to try and track down a large cinema projector for future events. The problem is that above 3500 lumens you enter the industrial category and a whole different price and availability range. In any case I won't be happy until we can create a certain level of suspension of disbelief. There's also that huge mural painting. You can't project anything on it, the paint absorbs and diffuses most of the light spectrum. I don't know what to do about that thing yet but it's gotta go. I do have a new high definition video trick up my sleeve for the next gig though. :)

Lasers:
DJ lace's Laser nightmare on Triumph street. I built a custom MIDI controlled laser system from scratch, we used at the club for a year, it rocks, and yet it died on me come show time. Go figure. So we brought our moving laser heads from the club, but I couldn't get one to stop saying happy birthday every 5 minutes. Friggin embarrassing. Every gig has at least one horror story, this one is mine. It's entirely my fault and it was a real bummer because my laser graphic software rules. These laser system are really fragile and unstable and I should have had a backup device. I do have a reputable 1 watt laser head on the way. Here's hoping it will live.

Stage:

We tried to bring the DJ closer to the audience, and make the stage disappear without using that ugly rock show stage fence. So I made the stage itself the fence with a black fabric skirt (props to the sound man for the skirt). I think it worked out ok, but next show we want to get in there the day before and create a more complex show system. Time was really a nightmare. I was up for 26 hours (coffee only thanks). I should know better, I've done enough of these things.

One of the things we have been doing is buying instead of renting. We fabricated and welded all the steel trussing we used at the show, and we bought the screen material & scaffolding. I also have a solid welding jig now for building trussing on a regular basis so we can expand and create all sort of complex structures. BTW, holy shit white spandex is expensive.

Smoking room:

We are never renting fence again. Renting 4 pieces of fence cost more than building 10. Screw that. It also gave me an idea. We want to offer people the ability to sit and chill in the smoking area but by law we can't have seats that can be moved around in there. So I'm designing a simple fence system with an attached bench, so people can have a smoke an sit down.

Glow sticks.

We gave out 400 free glow sticks at the door, and it looked amazing in the room. I love glow sticks. I always will. It just spells out party to me. The way I look at it a waving glow stick can only mean that someone is having fun. You can't act serious with glow sticks in your hands. And I'm all about having a fun all night Techno show, not an IDM sausage fest.

Conclusion:

Regardless of little hiccups the show went off, the response so far has been great and people are asking about the next one. DJs and Sound rocked and stage setup worked out well. We learned a lot for this gig and will be using that knowledge wisely. Once again thanks to all who came to the event! We promise to keep working hard on expanding and improving the quality of our production and bring you quality acts. Now we work on Nov 28.

[dSl-DuDe]

wow, quite an interesting read..

I'm upset I couldn't check it out

[khandydav3]

i *heart* 816/The World :D

[vaporize]

:rave:

[Akeel]

Lace! havent seen you in ages man - definately try to make it out to your next show :)

sounds like it was quite the ripper!