From the outside, the graffiti-marked red brick building at 485 Johnson Avenue looks like just another old Brooklyn warehouse. Inside, though, the cavernous 30,000 square foot structure, with its 30ft high ceilings and Funktion-One sound system, provides an ideal setting for the kind of intense warehouse parties and concerts that define nightlife in New York’s boroughs. Over the NYE weekend it housed two bashes: Get Real with house tech funk icons Claude VonStroke and Green Velvet DJs on 29th December and the BangON!NYC party featuring Thomas Jack and The Him on 31st December.
Both shows were juiced with eye searing light shows designed by Spencer Lavoie and Dave Betournay of 4Life Entertainment & Technology Solutions that featured the same Chauvet Professional fixtures. However, each show presented a very unique face to fans, thanks in large measure to Lavoie and Betournay’s adroit rigging of PVP LED video panels on different configured truss structures made with Chauvet’s TRUSST products. “We ran the totality of the panels for Get Real on night one as a large rectangle, and sent the feed from the Chauvet VIP Driver,” said Lavoie. “We then rebuilt the wall quite easily for the BangON!NYC event on the second night.”
On night one, the rectangular rig helped focus eyes on the center stage. For the second night, the LDs added a sense of depth to the stage for the BangON!NYC party. They did this by building a custom overlay with an arch in three separate sections. The second night structure held 64 video panels with 10 rigging points, with an additional second stage that had a ground stacked 4×2 panel video wall.
“The TRUSST and the video panels were easy to take down and rebuild after Get Real for the BangON!NYC event,” said Lavoie. “We appreciated the flexibility that this gave us. By reconfiguring the rigging, we were able to give the venue a different look on the two nights, while still keeping the essence of the light show from one concert to the next. The only thing that was rebuilt for the second show was the PVP video wall.”
Lavoie and Betournay created a seemingly endless array of looks that made each show stand out on its own terms, while still providing a shared essence. To accomplish this they relied on a rig that featured 16 Rogue R2 Beam, 8 Rogue R2 Spot and 12 Rogue R1 Wash fixtures, as well as two Amhaze II hazers and a DJ Hurricane 1800 Flex fogger to work this magic. For site lighting, they used DJ EZ Wedge Tri and SlimPAR fixtures.
