The 65,000 sq ft venue features both indoor and outdoor areas, including a rooftop party porch and all the VIP amenities you would expect from a club of this stature. The club embodies the attention to detail we've come to expect from nightlife mogul Victor Drai as well as Steve Lieberman, who has surrounded clubbers in an adrenalin-producing immersive lighting atmosphere.
A flexible Elation lighting package integrates with video throughout the 4,500-capacity venue. Surrounding the dance floor's custom-built 80-sided polygon centerpiece ball is a complement of spots, beams and washes, "the three basic food groups of lighting" as Steve describes it. Given a high degree of autonomy in creating the lighting, he layered into the design Elation Platinum Spot 5R Pro and Platinum Beam 5R Extreme moving heads, along with Rayzor Q12 Zoom LED wash lights and Protron LED strobes.
The system is used for broad washes, edgy spot and strobe lighting, as well as aerial effects with each night requiring anything from big lighting looks for those energetic peaks to more subtle moments with atmosphere-generating details. Other effects like laser and blinder effects as well as video are layered in. "Between those fixtures it gives a lot of different options and elements to make the space more dynamic from a live show where you need more traditional elements to dance floor lighting," Steve comments.
The successful result at Drai's is the outcome of Steve's thorough design process part of which involves turning on only one layer of lighting at a time to see if the pattern makes sense and also to make sure that it fills out the room and feels right. Designed with flexibility in mind to keep the lighting fresh and stimulating, the design forms a single cohesive element with all lighting elements working together.
(Jim Evans)
