Rookies: Destination Unknown
It all starts with an idea …
Destination Unknown all started because the Rookies crew (Caroline Santos & Mia Williams) wanted to create a music experience to remember. Not just another gig with a stage and DJ, something more intimate and well rounded to create an experience like no other.
With COVID foiling any travel plans these talented ladies set out to begin planning a night to remember for an exclusive group of music loving friends…Thats when we got involved.
As a team we had huge dreams and not so huge budgets to work with. We wanted to come up with some awesome, stand out light art pieces for around the venue, an entry walkway like no other, and cool zones throughout the space for people to connect and chill out in that aren’t necessarily right in the middle of the mosh-pit. Coupling all that with an awesome stage production we certainly had our work cut out for us.
Make it something to remember
A big part of the brief for this project was wanting to create a really awesome experience not only in front of the stage, but all around the venue. We came up with some cool ideas such as a huge LED UFO for the middle of the dance floor that would be turned on at a certain point in the night and do all sorts of cool LED chase effects through its three 3D levels. We then went one step further and installed a laser with a crowd safe lens at the top which shot straight down onto the ground creating a beaming effect from the UFO.
We originally wanted the UFO to be a series of big round structures, but after trying to make something that big and round out of timber it was proving to be difficult. We ended up with triangles, the largest one at the bottom with 1.4m long sides and then 3 more layers up from that all suspended from each-other using a strong nylon wire.
We then used individually addressable LED strips around the triangles. The plan was diffuse these using some drafting paper or light diffusion, however after wiring up the LED strips and giving it a test run we decided we quite liked the exposed pixel look of the bare LED strips so decided to keep them as is.
The UFO proved to be a massive pain to transport and store but ended up looking amazing once hung in the space. We used metal wire and a second seperate run of chain as safety to secure it to the hang points in the venue.
It was definitely a huge point of conversation and as the night went on we heard more and more people comment on how awesome it was.
Neon Jungle
The Rookies crew was really adamant they wanted to make a statement with the entrance to the venue. After seeing some builds out in the wild using special order neon orange spaghetti we thought up the idea of trying to find a more feasible option for us to use.
We found some reasonably priced yellow rope that glowed under UV light. After buying some to test out we set up some UV light tubes and hung some lengths from above. It looked awesome and we were very happy with the results we were getting from such a simple and affordable set up. After putting in an order for 120 more 8m lengths we then faced a new challenge.
The location in the venue where we were wanting to deploy the Neon Jungle was scarce of mounting options. The original plan was to drill holes through sheets of light plywood and feed the ropes through with a knot at the top to hold them in place. However after a few site visits we realised we didn’t want to mount any hard pieces of wood up in the roof of this spot as we couldn’t rig it as securely as we would have liked. The solution we came up with was to tie lengths of rope between two beams and then tie and tape the neon ropes down from those cross sections. They got heavy but managed to stay up and secure from start to finish, despite some people getting a bit excited and pulling on the ropes when walking through.
To illuminate the rope we used 5x 3 foot UV tubes ground mounted around the ropes. They were more than enough to get the ropes glowing even in the daylight. The Neon Jungle ended up being a very cost effective and awesome looking installation for Destination Unknown.
Other bits and pieces
The Rookies team were after a cool way to display their brand, in a big and bold way. Originally we were thinking a neon letter sign, after testing out some concepts we then pitched the different coloured round rings. We mocked one up with some cellophane and a hula hoop and then a rough cut out of a letter from card. Everyone liked it so we set out on finding a more solid, clean looking way of doing it. We settled on some lighting gels in various colours cut to size for the plastic rings we had. Then all that was needed was some letters cut out from thick card, and then screwing eyelets into the rings to secure the rings together so they didn’t rotate in the wind and end up backwards. We then used multiple chain points from the rings into the roof to hang them. They ended up looking awesome and were a statement piece you saw as you entered the outdoor dance floor space.
We wanted to transform as much of the venue as possible and the Neon Waves was a really bright, fun way to break up an otherwise boring, plain wall. Some Neon Flex LED tubes simply secured to some chicken wire simply powered by a 12v transformer with a splitter for the 3 runs. Very simple, very cool look.
Another huge addition we made to the space was adding 60m of addressable LED strips to the roof beams. This proved to be a tedious set up as we couldn’t cable tie around the beams, and they weren’t a great surface to use the 3m adhesive the strips come with on. Eventually we got them all attached and wired up. These strips were all controlled by a IR remote and then wired using a wireless power remote that we could use to turn them all on at once with from the ground. The Rookies team had a pre planned time during one of the DJ’s sets that they were going to build up to that we would then turn on all 60m of LED’s and the UFO all at once to create a “woooow’ moment for everyone there - which is exactly what happened, it was awesome!
We also tried using the same Neon Flex LED material previously mentioned to make some rings and triangles that we wanted to suspend outside in the eating area of the venue. These were single bright neon colours. Unfortunately the weather turned to the worst and we couldn’t deploy these on the night, however they remain an awesome looking design that we hope to use sometime.
Stage Design & Production
Our stage production design ended up being an awesome looking rig which was cranking all night long. We had a simple box truss goal post with 3 Chauvet Intimidator Hybrid 140SR’s (was meant to be more but we got given broken units from the rental company - a shame but still looked great nonetheless), 8 LED RGBW washes, a 1W RGB laser and a 700mW blue laser (was meant to be 2 RGB Lasers but again we got sent a broken unit). We then had a ground package of 4 7R beams along the back of the stage deck which were a great decision as they looked amazing. We then had 2 hazers running either side of the stage as it was an outdoor covered space so wind was heavily blowing the haze away quickly. Lastly we had 2 Par36 lamps either side of the stage to offer a key light onto the DJ’s. We were running this rig from a laptop with a midi controller from deep side stage.
We had bigger plans for the stage but due to extreme rain and wind ended up having downsize them on the day. Due to the wind carrying water onto the stage and we didn’t want any gear getting wet and risk any Health and Safety issues.
The lighting rig ended up looking amazing and complimented the music wonderfully. It was unfortunate that it didn’t quite get to be as big as it was meant to be but despite that it worked really well and added to the event tremendously.
As for the sound system used at Destination Unknown, we were lucky enough to have College Hill on board to donate their time and equipment. We had 4x JBL HLA 3 way speakers on top of 4x JBL 2x18 Subs with 2 12inch Turbo sound fold back monitors. All being run side stage from a Sound craft 16 channel mixer. This enormously huge sound system did not disappoint and sounded amazing. Huge thanks to the College Hill team for their support on this project, we couldn’t have done it without them.
