On NYE I over booked myself with two events I just couldn't pass up.
Literally, I agreed to do them within 14 hours of each other back in Nov. I thought if I use all of Dec. to produce both events and use my best personal resources I can pull it off.
We did, but it wasn't an easy ride.
San Francisco
Sea of Dreams NYE. I've done this event a few times in the past. Going back to 2001 it seems almost every other year. It's one of San Francisco's largest NYE events and for the past few years it's been held at the Concourse. A venue that can easily hold 8000 people.
I had an ambitious stage design concept of a mirror ball, circular truss and an "X" shaped screen design. (Never one to settle for just rectangular screens).
This is what our original design called for.
graphic design by inflatabill.
This was the main stage and in the second hall we had 3 large circular screens.
We used DVD's that I created with a circular mask and a Edirol v4 to create the circular mask shape. I wasn't sure about the throw distance with the projector so I made numerous size circles and then created chapters in the DVD to jump between sizes until I found the one I thought fit the screen best.
The "X" shape was created as a png file and hacked into the edirol PR-80 media server. It allowed me to mix two layers of content underneath the "X" mask. Specially designed content was created by Xarene, Kev lar and myself.
This was created by Xarene.
We designed video with the intention of bouncing it off the mirror ball to create a syncronized lighting effect with the video screens. Fragments of light would bounce off the ball and shoot across the "X" screen and 8ft spheres at the front of the stage.
Never mind the girl, you can see how the video was designed to work with the mirror ball. Photo credit tracy b.
Between the Red Bull Vegas gig and the San Francisco Sea of Dreams party I choose to be in San Francisco on NYE.
The Vegas show was in the parking lot of the Palms Hotel. Robbie Maddison broke the world record for longest motorcycle jump. It was televised on ESPN as the midnight east coast as the midnight celebration.
Here is a youtube video of the jump. The edit is a little dramatic.
However, I was flying back and forth between SF and Vegas everyday from the 27th to the 2nd. Then driving a van back from Vegas to Los Angeles on the evening of the 2nd.
I was fried..
Each morning I was getting up at 5:00AM to catch a flight between the two cities. In Vegas on the evening of the 30th I was working with John Taylor until 5:00AM in 33 degree temperatures in Las Vegas trying to fly Hexagon screens outdoors, with no stage backdrop. (I was promised a backdrop so I could hang these screens and register the projector). I never got the backdrop, something about the stage wasn't secure enough for a backdrop if the wind kicked up.
This was one of my toughest nights in my career. It was freezing, we had to jump into the van every 20 minutes just to bring our core body temperature up. Then, jump out and continue working. The budget had been slashed, I didn't have enough crew and most important I didn't have the backdrop I need to install these hexagon screens. It was only John and I late into the evening. In the end we never used the hexagon design for the backdrop. The television crew wanted to see the iconic Palms Hotel as it's stage backdrop. All the man hours creating content for the hexagons, the hours building the hexagon screens and of course that whole night trying to install them.
Back in LA Vello from V Squared Labs was creating content for the hexagon's and he was coming out the next day to VJ the event while I was in San Francisco.
Vello did a great job on content creation and the client loved what he did with the media provided. He ended up VJing on the large LED screens placed around the parking lot of the Hotel.
Here is a link to a flickr page from someone in production
And here is the link to the official Red Bull page.
Here is an interview with VJ Fader on VJ.tv. I'm talking about the challenges of producing two events on New Year's Eve in two different cities.
