Final video presentation – Light show and final track
I was quite confident as to how the performance was going to go as I was so happy with the track; I just had the feeling that as long as I had a good amount of control over the lights the experience would be just what I wanted. My set up consisted of the 3D laser on a stand in the middle, with the strobe and smoke machine just at the base of the stand on either side. The beams were placed in front of the speakers in each corner of the room to gain some width, facing in to direct the line of light into the centre and into the laser beams, which I knew everyone would concentrate on anyway. I was originally going to get 2 lasers, but I’m glad I didn’t, as there would have been too many lasers in the confined space. Simplicity is sometimes better; so 2 lasers would have been overkill I think. The strobe and lasers were wired through a control box where I could switch them on or off without having to kill the power and then wait for them to load back up once I had switched the power back on, and the beams were wired through a separate control box where I had 4 switches, darken, strobe, sound to light and smooth.
As it goes, I certainly feel the layout I used was the best way and worked well, like I keep saying, everyone concentrates on the lasers so I knew they had to be the central point. The beams help tie the music to the lights better than the contrasting lasers, as they have some ambience and mood about them. The use of colour, speed and intensity with the beams does help create atmosphere, especially the strobe function, which always acts to build energy. The strobe on these is really good as it is in complete sync with the music, the sound to light settings are sensitive which let them take care of themselves whilst I sorted the rest. I have to admit, I really think I didn’t need the extra strobe afterwards, but I suppose if nothing else it does help build that extra bit of energy in the drops, which is the euphoric experience I am trying to encapsulate.
As for the equipment itself, really can’t complain at all and spending the extra bit on top quality equipment made all the difference I feel, the 3D laser for example was great, incredibly mesmerising. The beams did exactly what I needed them to, create mood and feeling whilst hyping up then calming the space around the lasers when needed. With the smoke added into the mix it creates an almost intoxicating atmosphere that involves you in the experience, submerging and stimulating your senses. It is this whole atmosphere that really makes the experience, and is certainly helped when under the influence of substances or indeed with a room of people who appreciate the music. This is one of the only things needed in this video, you have your core few drum and bassers but everyone else is undoubtedly enjoying the music but it possibly isn’t to their tastes, so the movement is not as it should be. The room was possibly a bit too smokey at times, due to the controller on the haze machine being dodgy and not fully switching off, which meant it was continuously letting off a small amount of smoke all the time, quickly filling up the relatively small space I was using, but it was Ok for the time being and I just had to keep letting out a bit of the smoke from time to time. One other massively annoying mistake I made was leaving the camera on auto focus, which is why the shot goes a bit funny at times, so for this reason for the final copy of the video I have sliced together parts of both the viewings I did, one with the room full of people and the other with only a few. It’s hardly noticeable when sliced really, so not a massive problem in the end.
This is the original footage with the original sound recorded live. As you can see at times it does go really blurred, but apart from that really happy with the way it went on the day and felt everyone had a good time in there and enjoyed the experience, which was the most important thing. The blur almost looks a bit art, like your there and feeling a bit overwhelmed, vision gone a bit blurry, then slowly focusing back into reality, but it just gets annoying after a while. One huge lesson learnt, always check the focus! To be fair I had checked to see if the camera was in focus, but foolishly not what it was set to.
This version has the sound dubbed for a proper copy of the tune, so it has clean crisp audio. The live versions fine, but you can’t really hear the detail in the tune so dubbing it over the top gives you a better reflection of the sound involved.
This version only has a few people inside, and so you can see the lights in action a little better. It is still a little smokey inside, but you can still make the lights out well, and the colours, which are important. The laser cuts through the smoke so well and you just cant help but look into it. I often get this with lasers; they are extremely engaging, if you ask me because of the contrast and the way it cuts through the smoke in such a direct way. The beams sort of take the background, calming and building where appropriate. I think 4 of these, 1 above each one on the floor, would have created a touch more atmosphere, but then they could have just as easily overcomplicated things as well, so overall I was extremely happy with the performances.
This last video was the edited version to play at the crit, with a bit of talk over analysis in places just so I could explain the lights as people were seeing them.
