Mobile DJ Get the Best out of Your Lighting for Some Great Effects

0:00 This really involves every single mobile DJ out there

So, it doesn't matter whether you are a mobile DJ with thousands of pounds worth of lighting or you're a mobile DJ who's just started up and you've got a couple of lights. This really involves every single mobile DJ out there. First of all, I'd like to go back to the 70s and the lighting in the 70s. Now, you didn't really have moving heads, you didn't have lots of the great effects, you didn't have LED lighting. You had pin spots, you had mirror balls, you had some optokinetic colour wheels if you were really, really lucky. And you had the occasional strobe and that was about it. But you did actually have these other lights and they were sort of, the term was light boxes. And what they were was almost like light bulbs coloured in a box with some sort of mirrored frontage that would not only let the light through,

But the light behind it would shine on the mirrors themselves, giving an effect. And these boxes could range from two foot by one foot up to like two by two foot. I mean, sometimes DJs used to make them and they used to look really good because when you looked at the DJ, the lighting effect was an effect in itself. Now, let's analyse that. Let's imagine you go out and you buy a £1,000 moving head. And that £1,000 moving head has prisms, you can change the gobos, it's RGBW, red, green, blue and white, so you can get all kinds of colours. It's, you know, 500 watts and it's an amazing light. But if you actually look at that light from a distance and you look at the light itself, all you're seeing is a small aperture.

2:31 Except very much more, I mean, really expensive

And that's where the light comes from. Of course, the effect then is on the wall. Now, old school lighting, the lights of Fowl, that was one of the makes, used to design lighting that was an effect in itself. So when you looked at it, you looked at not only the light as being an effect, but also it then gave an image or not an image, but then shone up the area around it. Now, those days are practically gone because there are very few lights like that. Unless, of course, you are very rich and you can afford to get LED panels, which is pretty much sort of the same thing. Except very much more, I mean, really expensive. I mean, like, so how can you get that kind of effect for a minimal and I mean a minimal cost?

Well, I will show you right. So first of all, I'm dropping it and I'm trying to do all of this while I'm holding the cameras, but the camera. They're on the city like that, please don't fall. Right? Okay, so that there is the Nova Pro Derby 9 DMX. There it is in all its glory. Now something like this will cost you about 60 quid. All right, so it's DMX sounds like master slave now. All right, here's the deal. You buy something like that and let's say if something goes wrong with it in within the year, you have a right, a legal right to take it back to where you bought it from and they'll either swap it or fix it because you know everything should have at least a 12 months warranty. On the other hand, if let's say you've had it for 12 months and it's been in and out of gigs for like 50 or 60 times and after 14 or 15 months it dies.

Well, you know what? You've had a bloody good deal for a few quid, so don't complain. Alternatively, if you're a bit of a spy, Archie trying to fix it, why don't fix it yourself? Alternatively, if you've got three or four of them keep it and use it for spare parts. But so far to date this has been bashed and battered around and it still works perfectly all right. So there it is. And if I now let's say I plug this in and Sean this against the camera, you would see the effect here which is quite a big effect. It's not like a small circle from the likes of a moving head but then also the effect would cover the wall. So you got two effects. You've got one from here and one on the wall, but the one effect here is not as great as the one on the wall and sadly in most places in the UK we're not allowed to use smoke.

4:59 I've got the light console and just make sure I've got it correctly up

So you're actually missing the best part of the effect which is of course the light cutting through the smoke before it hits the wall. And that's the sad thing we're in today a lot of venues you just can't use smoke so what I'm about to show you now is pretty much the cheap and new way of getting some form of great effect out of something like this. So what I'm going to do is I'm now going to turn the camera like that and I'm now going to place this here. I'm gonna plug that in and plug that in there and I'm going to turn that up like that, right? So I've got the light console and just make sure I've got it correctly up. And on there it is right. So I'm going to leave that like that now first of all, as you can see that is let me turn the light off as well.

Okay, so light off and let me just I'll leave it like that. Okay, bearing in mind this is daylight as well. Okay, it's pretty much broad daylight. All right, so we've got a nice effect there but let's have a look now from the other side. Okay, so check that out. Now again, you know, we are hold on. Turn. Down there. All right. Yeah, I've gone to a slightly my white balance is changing on the camera, but you can see now we've got a great effect and also on the side as well. Now to me that looks amazing. Now what I've done here as well, I don't remember whether I uploaded the video yet, but I did do a video very similar not like similar to this, but I had the QSC base cabs inside there. And the only reason I'm using this scrim kind of cover is because the normal cover,

Which is plastic over that if you can see, but it's broken there and at the top it's cracked so I don't really want to use that gigs anymore. Just looks a bit rough really, but that looks pretty good now again, you know, I would have to maybe tidy it up a little bit. I fitted it together with cable ties at the moment. But hopefully you get the idea. So we've got movements and now I'm using a relatively inexpensive light. I've got that behind the console. And now the console itself is a moving effect for very minimal cost. All right, I'll put a link in the description to Nova Pro and I hope that's been a help and try it out. And if you do try it out, you know, follow me on Facebook as well. There'll be a link to my Facebook page and let's see some of your pictures of your kit and your

Mobile setup as well. All right, thank you very much practice and enjoy.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.