One of the things to me that is always underestimated in music venues, is the lighting and what this does with the scenery. Now everyone will confirm that for a nice music setting you also need some lights in there. I mean....no one likes to dance or have a conversation in a TL-light induced venue and will later on say at home 'the music sucked but he setting was so nice'.
The opposite is also not entirely the solution for everything. Even though when the music sucks, you can still enjoy the lighting setting. Still, it will not work pumping in endless amounts of rented lighting settings just to get the atmosphere better. It just will not make up for the music being crap.
So the balance needs to be there. Because without any cool lighting situation it won't be fun, but it can't chance everything as well.
The big but....When the music is sweet, and the lighting goes along in this setting, then it is truly an enhancement. Then the lights will make the music more intense, make the vibe better, and make the thoughts of how your night was dreaming back on a place where nothing else mattered anymore. It was just the music, the dancefloor and everything that was happening there in between. Maybe even forgetting there are people around you as well.
What is interesting to me is when you are looking at those lighting guys and what they do on an evening, is what is costs and what people want to spend on it.
Say you want to host an event and you want some lights in there as well. That means you need a lightdude for setting up. Let's call the lightdude Bulby...just because we can! Bulby needs to be there beforehand to build up everything. Lighting is not only building up some lights, but everything needs juice to get it started and you also need some kind of switchboard, otherwise everything will be just on...or just off.
So Bulby is driving towards the place, needs to has his own lights, take all the lighting out of the car, build it up, test everything and make it cool. All of this is before anything has even started.
Then during the event Bulby is behind the switches. Trying to get something nice done during the music to get the atmposhere going. Making it dark at the right moments, lighting up the room when the boiling point needs that.
After the event has ended, Bulby will either start dismantling everything at the moment, or come back the next day to dismantle everything. And again, walk up and down with all of his equipement and drive off again.
Not even considering the fact here that lights also break and have a maximum amount of burning hours and that Bulby will need to buy new ones every now and then.
Seeing how many hours Bulby is spending there to make the event happen versus what he takes home moneywise is often not in line at all. Music all comes first, when there is some budget left over...that is when someone decides to book Bulby.
...is that we needs Bulby a bit more loving in how important they actually are to get a cool event. That's it...that's the post. Give more respect to the lights dude and also pay him!
These snaps were taken by me in the Radion venue during Amsterdam Dance event. The Bulby there was on point making an awesome atmosphere. Bulby got my appreciation for sure during this event! Hopefully he also got a nice buck out of it as well
