The concept was to make one Saturday night per month, at each club within the Luminar estate, different from other weekends. With the Diagio brands soon on board and keen to support a night out that would 'wow' customers and set Luminar apart from the competition, the brief encompassed not only dancers, giveaways and drinks promotions but also substantial extra production and stage sets.
The project was driven by Luminar Group's head of marketing and central operations, Tim Howard, designed and project-managed by lighting designer and Luminar club technician, John Richardson and assisted with further practicalities by club technician Ben Adams.
Richardson expands, "We wanted to deliver an experience akin to what our customers may experience at a large festival or concert but within the familiar surroundings of a Luminar venue. , With that in mind, the designs we gave to Chauvet were for five very impressive, tourable, production kits.
"Chauvet has so many good products that it was tough to decide what kit to use within each pack. LED seemed the way forward for power reasons, and 'green thinking'. This led us to use a range of new fixtures that are driven by LED technology rather than conventional discharge lamps, thus saving up to 30% on power, and negating the need to replace lamps - at an approximate 50,000 hours you could leave a unit on continuously for three years!"
Fitting both brief and budget, Chauvet's final five packages were delivered road-ready with flight cases to protect kit in transport and pre-wired for minimal setup times. A pre-programmed control system ensured each new set was ready to go, whilst allowing the in-house technician freedom to add programs and video content tailored to the venue and event.
The packages comprised two identical touring video sets of 20 Chauvet Professional MVP 18 LED video panels with a bespoke rigging system driven by two Chauvet Professional VIP Drivers controlled via an Apple Mac Mini Video server with Modul8 software.
The first of the three impressively packed lighting rigs was comprised of six Chauvet DJ Intimidator Beam LED 350 fixtures, six DJ COLORband PiX and six of the DJ BEAMbar, hung upon a TRUSST truss system of two each, 2 m, 1.5 m and 1 m truss towers.
The second lighting system, hung from a TRUSST half-metre Goal Post System, comprised six each DJ Intimidator Spot LED 350s and DJ BEAMshot, with eight DJ Core 3x3 LED panels.
On the third rig comprised of four 2 m TRUSST truss towers, eight Professional Legend 412 combine with 12 DJ PiXPar 12.
Richardson concludes, "These production kits represent a real step in the right direction for Luminar venues and stamp our mark as leading the late night, high street entertainment industry in production and value to our customer's night out."
(Jim Evans)
