NYE Gig reports - lets have them!

[SilentEclipse]

OK i go first, :jump: I can only report on my own gig though.

I played at a reggae concert with Sugar Minot, Errol Dunkley and Errol Donaldson at the Brixton recreation center.

It was a bit of an old school affair with many older generation Jamaicans in the audience.

I was mixing it up with VJ Eykon under the Vj name 'CEEEN'
We played a mixture of cultural images, old school brixton footage, old footage of life in jamaica as well as a mixed bag of reggae/rasta imagery using Resolume, mixed up with effects generated using archaos, flowmotion and neuromixer.

We back projected from behind the stage area, which worked well apart from the fact that we could not see the audience, however lots of people came back stage to tell us that they were really digging our images etc etc.

The only problem we experienced with the gig was down to the promoter being a bit cheap and tacky.
In order to save money he was not using any down lighting on the stage, they just had up-lights and a big spotlight. This meant that he audience could hardly see anything on stage and that the images on our screen (next to the stage) were actually brighter than the artists. :eek:

The promoter got a bit upset because more people were looking at our screen than at the stage :yep: :confused:

Anyway we still had lots of fun and have been booked for Valentines day.

Here are a few pictures of the gig
http://www.pbase.com/rampart/sugar_minot_nye_2004

[vjrei]

Man, it is a fact that promoter only cares about making money... period! I have been trying to deal with promoters but if the show is making money why they need to improve it with visuals? (for example).

So, do never expect to find support in a promoter, find it with the band as a "guest musicican", that way you will get the same rights as a band member.

And let me tell you that be carefull with visuals and musicians because you are dealing with their ego and most of the time musicians do not like to have the attention focused in something different than them.

[RayV]

Had the cops closing the party held 1 day b4 NYE
It was a launch for a "mix tape" cd - great local scratch duo
& 2 years anniversary of a small local label..
The club had problems with license etc,
So...end up not vjing / naturally didn?t get paid too
:sad:
But the club took their sound system to the street so the party went on - was cold but fun! The cops came again twice but left us alone eventually since it?s an industrial part of town with no neighbors ;)

The next night, NYE party i vj'd at, seemed heartless & it felt a job like thing.
(Post production house party)
the music was fine, at times even good...
BUT
It was way too crowded so ppl couldn?t REALLY dance, too long cues for both bars, (not drunk eanogh),
it felt like a factory more than a party.
Got some positive comments for the visuals [yay]
(post production house, so ppl sure got something to say),
but i enjoyed the night b4 so much better...

[Mile]

I VJ'ed on a 'club' party in a 'classy' cafe here in Enschede (Netherlands). They hired a drive-in show to to transform the cafe into a disco. Looked pretty good.

Only problem was, they started with 70's music (something I didn't knew). I only had humoristic 70's footage so I had to start with some logo's and stuff ;)

Later in the night when the club started it became interesting. It wasn't our lucky day though as one of the recordplayers broke down and my computer restarted twice (never happend before). :help: But hey, it was fixed in no time and we had a fun NYE after all

A few photos on the end of the night: http://vj.electricfusion.org/photos/nieuw/

[LEVLHED]

no video for me this year..I did the mainstream DJ thang at "O" (http://www.marcelbiro.com/o/) . It was dismally slow, by 11pm I could still count the number of customers on my hands! I wasn't suprised though. I'd DJ'd there for Halloween and it was about the same...don't think they'll be trying to hire entertainment again for a while. I did get paid though...packed and outta there by 1:30am so I stopped by another place where my friend was DJing for a bit. All in all a pretty low-key start to 2005.

[CA]

I did my 1st "live" mix this NYE at the club. By this I mean that I was not running VHS tapes and DVD in to the v4. Of course I still had them for back up but I mainly focused on using my tower running Neuromixer to mix most of my clips. Hands down it was the coolest looking show that I have done there so far.

The best thing is that the owners that were hanging out in the booth seemed impressed with the set up and content. I might be able to get them to invest in some video gear for the 2nd room in the basement. There has been talk of setting up a video bar down there and showing them Grid2 and Neuro I think might have sealed the deal.

As for the night...It was pretty fun I guess. Since NYE fell on a Friday this year, it was a gay night. Nice for the club, no fights, good tippers. Last week the host (a 200 lbs black drag queen named Robert) and I shot some footage of him doing his thing. The crowed really like that. it turned out to look something like Lazy Girlz but with out the stupid wipes and graphix.

Good night.

VJCA

[bluesi]

My NYE venture went splendidly. It was a 2000 strong Drum'n'bass radio 1 and 1xtra gig which was running in conjuction with Metropolis and Factory from Manchester.

I made a fair bit of tailored footage for this one. A lot of reference to John Peel (R.I.P.), which was requested by the promoters. I got lots of positive feed back because of this as you would expect. Also lots of tecky messed up stuff like a blue satallite image which zoomed in in stages from a globe down to the venue in manchester I was in (this was my favorite specifically created piece as it ended up looking like a map from aliens - very drum'n'bass!). Logos featured as well of course as there were so many organisations envolved in the night and loads of charities being donated too (including the tsunami fund).

I made screens to fit the venue as the only place they could go was in front of the stage from the ceiling but it was very low so I had to make them quite narrow. The only problem came when the club got so sweaty that the screens started sagging under there own weight - nice. I also went crazy with set up and brought along 5 playback sources, 2 computers running resolume, 2 cameras, 2 vision mixers and three projectors. The most I've ever had purely for me to play with.

The Main room drum'n'bass was top but the high light for me was the Orbital DJ set in the second room, which for a DJ set was happily all of the hits messed up a bit rather than one or two of their songs with other peoples stuff making up the majority.

The crowd was a good mix with little kicking off happening and the only real problem coming from the cloak room completely messing it up at the end of the night. Resulting in one girl getting crushed when the police had to close it down due to the chaos. She's alright now though. So for that big a drum'n'bass night there was surprisingly little drama.

I didn't take any pics (dam!) but here are a few from sites:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/events/gallery/nyemanchester/gallery.shtml
http://www.nwdnb.co.uk/gallery/albums.php

[bluesi]

before: (thats me in the green. I was in the sound booth with the lighting guy while the sound guy was by the stage)

[bluesi]

during:

[alangeering]

My NYE was a little different again.

1. Church service (band/visuals/etc) to midnight, then...
2. live to BBC to hear Big Ben chime, then...
3. party.


Preparation for the live feed was hampered by being in a vally with little TV reception. We finally managed to find a spot that had reception... but it was a ling way from our venue.

So, a few massive cable runs and radio links later... we had a feed.

BUT... with only 4 minutes to midnight the live feed disapeared.

Why?

Someone decided they wanted to play with the scalextric track and unhooked the TV tuner (at the other end of the cable run).

I had to sprint from the venue (wonderful girl stepped in to run visuals in the minute or so I was absent), plug everything back in, confirm we had the feed, (having a good set of radios is so useful), and run back.

Big ben, fireworks, blah, blah, blah, time for a party.

Party was for 100 people (so nothin like your big 2k+ parties) and I spent the first half of the night operating lights. 2nd half of the night was more fun, brother set up live camera feed and it was time to play with feedback and input fx on the MX1.

All good fun.

[WordVirus23]

Best two quotes of the weekend:
"if this doesn't make the projector lose sync, nothing will!" -dis
&
"we've gotta smoke all this before I leave"-cool new friend

we (Disassembler and I) were supposed to show up on the 30th to trouble shoot, only a blizzard stopped both of us (1 by car, 1 by plane) from getting there until the afternoon of the 31st. as we walked in, it was nice to notice that the projectors were already on, & focused. and the screens were hung by the stage with care, in hopes that VJs soon would be there.

it was as simple as setting up and plugging in, that's the way big shows should go.

GEAR LIST:
1 mac running VDMX
1 PC running TZT
(2) V4s
1 Entrancer (DAMN! THIS THING ROCKS!!!!)
1 DVD Player
1 Live feed w/ a nice 3 chip Canon (and cameraman - thanks J brothers)

party was for 2000 heads, DJs played horrible commercial crap, but the punters didn't seem to notice until about 3am, when things started to clear up a bit (it was crazy packed earlier) by 3:30 we were clearing the theater and packing up. the theater people might as well have had cattle prods with the efficiency they cleared that room :)

a palette of Dicken's Cider to be leeched from kept me/us up most of the night.

damnit, my promoter rocks!
2 rooms reserved at the Hilton
*over*paid me/us (paypal you soon D, still haven't cashed check)
this is from someone who hasn't seen me in over a year (he moved to reno, 6+ hrs from my home town)
so, not every promoter is out to screw you, maybe if you stopped wearing that "Screw Me" shirt? :)

the show: I did titling and Dis fried retinas
(lol... I can't believe you got asked to stop playing the nekkid people at a party called Erotica!):banghead:
<rolls eyes>

I found out that VJs are the dirty lil secret of the theater world, we were told "if you can see them, they can see you" we would have garnered more respect if we'd have worn all black... not that it mattered, we were set up backstage, behind props..... I'm used to being a lil more rockstar than this... but oh well! gear was safe! :) dancers, lasers, bands, DJs, VJs, girls gone wild style party, and the stage show/props still stole the show... good times had by all (even if I passed out on the hotel room floor the last night) :)
nice meeting your bro too Dis : )-~

MAD PROPS to the staff @ the Hilton Theater, Greg, Ed & all the rest. and to the promoters Shawn and Marco and staff of www.liftentertainment.com

..james...

[WordVirus23]

with that sort of attitude, you won't get very far with promoters. be cocksure and ballsy, think Rockstar! (not computer dork).

as it is our job to make screens look good, it is their job to make sure the party has beautiful people/makes money. the more you dis him about his job, the less likely you are to work with/for him.

my advice is to definitely find a promoter that's in the game because of a love of the music/scene... not the coke-sniffing slimey middle man sort (even those have their uses at times too).

my gigging (for livilihood like myself) musician friends actually suggested to *NOT* get caught up in a band, as it can be a dead end alley filled with wasted time, ego battles, and missing bass players. I work *with* bands, but not as a member, band members generally don't make as much nor do they gig as often as I can/do.

if they've got a happenin' party... the key is to appeal to their Promoter side... help them to establish their "brand/party/club/dj name" do they have sponsors? (you know the sponsors want screen time....) upcoming events? big DJ for the night? special holiday/benefit party? (charity parties do NOT mean everyone plays for free... in 3+ yrs of pro gigging, I've done exactly 1 charity party)

Originally posted by vjrei
Man, it is a fact that promoter only cares about making money... period! I have been trying to deal with promoters but if the show is making money why they need to improve it with visuals? (for example).

So, do never expect to find support in a promoter, find it with the band as a "guest musicican", that way you will get the same rights as a band member.

[Mile]

the key is to appeal to their Promoter side
Hell yeah, this is the golden rule. Already found THAT out :yep:

[RickRobiN]

I was the lucky one who did Hotel Arena Amsterdam. sweet money>>>Love vjcentral! Made me :yep: beam into a good 05!
Did it with 2 laptops, vdmxx an module8, really nice combination. Live compositions with video tracks in 3d space in module8. and all the beauty of vdmx. Did some nice motiondesign for those 2 programms
Really love this site :jump2: thanx 2 xangadix 'nd his crew 2 be busy somewhere else.
really love vjcentral....:love:
cheers RR

[freakowen]

ours went pretty well, did http://www.seeksanctuary.net/newyearseve.html - industrial night (my fave) ended up emptying out around 3am and we managed to get off about 6. Loads of good comments, including from the two live acts who got an animated backdrop with the live cam chroma-keyed over the top. Dj's liked having us there, even if they did have to squeeze past us to get into the booth. Major plus point was that we were the only people not to have any technical problems, strobe died, decks jumped, amp over heated...visuals kept going :D

and the most surprising bit - we were the best paid people there :eek: better than the dj's and even better than the promotor!! (made sure they stuck to what we had agreed beforehand....)

got a couple of pictures on the other laptop - will try and get some uploaded at some point...

[ui]

The theme of our New Year's Eve Party was

Disco Era (http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=9559)

and those leads some of you offered really help the cause along.

We had three rooms set up, one with a Times Square theme, which also sported a pair of VJ's named Eskimo Kitchen. I was pretty occupied at my station all night, so I didn't get the chance to check out their set when the ball dropped, but they brought along two free-standing truss screens at 9x12 feet, and projected material from DVD decks adjacent to the DJ lineup.

Another room had a warehouse theme...not too far to go there in terms of decor: the site was a remodeled foundry.

I discovered that my room was called "South Beach" about three days before the gig, so I was busy prepping as many videos of flamingoes, bikinis and Miami Vice reruns as possible to coincide with the general disco theme. Only had one screen, so I kept the equipment load relatively light....

- NEC Beamer @ 1700 lumens
- Archos AV480 for longer clips
- Laptop w/ Arkaos
- Canon Optura Camcorder for video capture
- Korg MS2000 for MIDI control (neeeeeed knobbbbs)
- A couple gallons of Red Bull, thankfully sponsoring an event running for eight straight hours, plus a couple hours' setup.

All in all, the results were fantasic. Martin light trees were installed all over the place, but the folks putting together the installation were very courteous folks who made sure my screen was visible. I also appreciated that they got a kick out of using an MS2000 for video triggering. People interacted with the video, and vice versa, and that was rewarding enough for me. Flamingos were pecking at Don Johnson's head. Boney M's head was melting down into disco balls...ahhhh....and yes, I did resort to some Saturday Night Fever if only for that scene where Travolta zips himself up to the boogie.

[spaceman]

I'm proud to announce that for this NYE, the U.V. Studios team played 3 diferent gigs and entertained about 5000 people.
Atin played in Delhi at the Intercontinental, Piku at Rock Bottom, a major club in Bombay were we're the resident V.J.s and I played at the Grand Hyatt in Bombay with Boney M.
We all had a great time, pics to come later....

[asterix]

Spare a thought for me. Last year we had major arguments with the venue operator and ended up tearing down all our gear and pissing off by 11:pm
this year Im so sick I can't move or talk let alone swill down a cold beer. NYE sucks ass!

[alienical]

Hi,

NYE at Trinity in Bristol.......Tribe of Frog trance special. I was involved with Denny, and her VJ activities....

The first time I have been involved. She used ArKaos, initially with licensee troubles....but it all looked and sounded great in the end.

Happy new year
alienical

[bluesi]

Tribe of Frog trance special

Do the froggies do any thing else?

Tribe of Frog at new year, ahhh, what joy. Im jelous. Are there any pics?

[Anyone]

didnt gig on NYE,
but was at Womb in Tokyo on 24th with Fullcycle DJs (UK as well)

incidentally, the VJs booked for NYE at Womb cancelled,
so could possibly have done it then as well,
but found out too late...

still quite a good lazer light set there on NYE...

Ne1

[wellREDman]

my NYE gig got cancelled , so i took the opportunityto have a quiet night in

Bah Humbug

[disassembler]

Originally posted by WordVirus23
Best two quotes of the weekend:
"if this doesn't make the projector lose sync, nothing will!" -dis
&
"we've gotta smoke all this before I leave"-cool new friend

Mission accomplished!
:D

Originally posted by WordVirus23
party was for 2000 heads, DJs played horrible commercial crap, but the punters didn't seem to notice until about 3am,


Reno's finest strippers will steal the show EVERY time. James you've got to get that footage from the J brothers and Josh.
:D

Originally posted by WordVirus23
nice meeting your bro too Dis : )-~

MAD PROPS to the staff @ the Hilton Theater, Greg, Ed & all the rest. and to the promoters Shawn and Marco and staff of www.liftentertainment.com

..james...

I had the best time. Tell everyone (Josh, Sponge, and Heather) I said hello. I'll see you all again sometime in the near future. Let me know when you plan on coming to Michigan :nod: . I've got the guest room ready.

cheers,
-d e o n

[photonics]

Hello, my report

photonics did a job in disco real in Tongres (Belgium).

We arrived in the afternoon. This because there was no projector available in the disco. There wasn't a possibility to hang them on truss or etc. So we went upstairs with climbing material. We made a steel construction, with chains for the projector. The screen we build was a fastfold 183x244. With our 2600 lumens a bright screen :)

Our Vj-booth was on the first floor. With a view on the dance-area. With a 3CCD DVCAM we filmed the disco & crowd. We had also a spy-cam on the dj-booth.

12h: new year: with our DVJ-X1 no problem. we started the dvd-track from our booth. Sound by line to the dj-booth.

it was a long night: party stopped @ 11h. (with 300 people inside.)

some facts:

projector: sanyo XP40
screen: 183x244
crowd: 1400+
dvdplayers: sony / pioneer dvj-X1
HD-recorder: Pioneer DEH-720s
mixer: mx50
camera: 3CCD dvcam, spycam

soft:= arkaos with evolution keyboard

Saturday 16h: i came home, and went asleep.

[Lara]

No VJing for me and Visualnaut, we dressed up as cowboys and ran the streets of Newquay in Cornwall squirting people with water pistols...

Then went back to my brother in law's parents hotel for a free self service bar all night and chocolate cake with clotted cream in the early hours.

All Good!

L x

[Kyle]

I spent the night in Niagara Falls, Canada in a friends basemint. Watched the ball drop on TV. Nothing to write on VJF about. I was supposed to be jamming with WordVirus and Diss but opted out at the last minute due to air(un)fare prices. With the money saved I did pick up a shuttle pc and a new dv cam for Christmas. :)

[Scratchpole]

Twas a fine night for all concerned...
Scuba (my long time saturday job) at the Room formerly the Fez club, Sheffield.

So back to the way it should be...
the club just reopened before Xmas.. after few months absence,due to licencing difficulties. Bloody kids with weapons, in adjoining venue. arghh.

(best opening night with Mathew Herbert djing, a beautiful date and only slide and solar 250's to plug in. Danced my socks off)

Back to my little corner of the world..with a crowd of 200+ on NYE a good family?! atmosphere.
Arrived back from holiday's at 3pm to discover the beamer was double booked, sourced another, borrowed my pals G4 powerbook decamped to my studio,downloaded, composited three shuttle countdowns and takeoffs for midnight.

Played most of the night with two Max/jitter patches AV/RT similar to Neuromixer, and an extended version of the Sudden Guest Rabbit patch (mapping logos and movs onto 3D sound reactive open GL abstractions) Took along VHS so I got an hour long break playing previously a recorded scuba tape.

I put up a new shelf for projectors during the closure, in a spot to give a direct view from dj booth, so loads of good comments on my work, from the top notch resident DJs and the crowd alike.

Looking forward to a busy new year..
Hope to see more of you out there doin' it