Aerial Display for mobile gig

[wildboy]

I work as a mobile dj with an rgb laser and for most its an awe inspiring effect. I have a preset display which cycles but I wonder if there are any experienced light technicians that would suggest incorporating pauses for x amount of time before resuming or if there are certain display rules that can be incorporated into the show to acheive a bigger impact within the usual 4 hour set of music?

[oliverst14@hotmail.com]

i work with a mobile dj as his roadie/lighting guy. its always better to try and sync the effect to the style of music. for example a slow flat pan for the intro of a song and a fast (maybe strobe) for when the songs building and so on. also i find that if you wait till later in the disco then put the lasers on after flooding the room with smoke it creates more of a wow.

we have the bonus of having two of us so i can control the lighting to the beat whilst the dj works the beat but there are a few things you can do.

live pro is a great laser software and is very simple to use once learnt. it would require another laptop but can be controlled by just tapping different keys on the keyboard. so you could have 10 fast cues 10 build up cues and 10 slow cues and just tap away.

i wouldnt say there was an amount of time you should switch it off for but i do think it should be off for a while then turn it on at an appropriate time to wow the crowd. if its on scrolling the same effects over and over all night people will start to get used to the effect and it will become slightly boring.

another thing you could do is get a laser show player such as show rider for the pangolin fb3. this allows you to create a pre made laser show or use one avaliable on the forum, and at the touch of the play button will do the laser show automatically synced to the music perfectly every time as long as you made the laser show synced to the music when created.

both of these choices require you to have a dac which is a laser show controller, a piece of software to control the laser with and a ilda controllable laser.

if you dont have these, there is one more thing i have done before i had ilda lasers and dacs. i used a program called freestyler and an interface called a velleman dmx to usb. this allows you to use the laser on dmx triggering preset patterns. this is ok but not as good as ilda. this program is also able to be synced to music with winamp timecode but is very fiddly to use. it is possible and i did manage it once.

if none of these options are viable i would advise only using your laser after the buffet and have all the other lights off on the intro to the first track after the buffet. turm all the room lights off and have a countdown type start to your disco. turn the laser on and wait till the end of your countdown and the start of the song your going to play to turn the rest of your lights on. then i would advise only having your laser on for at most a third of the time in 5 or 10 minutes spurts. this is not set in stone but all im saying is dont leave it on all the time

cheers mate
ollie

any questions give me a shout

[rfourt]

Im sure you might allready know this allready but just in case.

Like oliverst said.
Keep the laser to a minum or keep it of if possible untill you have gotten the crowd to the highpeek of the night. (sry for my english)
Then start them slowly perhaps just doing beams for a while and then start doing the effects.

Here is one scenario we used to do when i was working with LaserMedia.

If the party where going on from 21.00-05.00
we didnt even light up the laser untill between 24.00-01.00

We then just lit the laser at an apropriate time synced to the music, with a single green and strong beam going straight over the crowd and just stay there fixed. The crowd will at first love it and after about 10-20minutes they become used to the green light and possibly some even think thats it. :

If you then have some great intro that starts slow and then builds up you could cue in that slow intro and turn all the other lights down and push the smoke-button. And well i guess you get the rest

One key role we had, although this was back in the 90,s early 2000 (scanners where really expensive and hard to find something that was over 20kpps in speed, and the software we had was an old monocrome atari machine.) Anyway, we only made animations and scanning effects at the highpoints of a song, and the rest of the time only used beamsshows on bouncing mirrors or mirrorballs.

Although this has changed now from what i have seen in many new laser projectors there are rarly any beamshows mostly animations wich i think is kinda bad becouse the wow-effect from the crowd fastly goes down after just a few minutes.

just my 2kroners.

good luck.

/Rick