Mobile DJ Lighting Effect Make Your Show Look Stunning!

0:00 Couple of pictures and hopefully you'll

Alright, welcome to my mad world. Now this video hopefully is going to help you make your light show look a little bit more interesting. So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures and hopefully you'll be able to see these. Got a wide angle lens on, can you see that? Now that is your, I don't know, regular show. DJ booth in the centre, your PA, and there's a couple of tripods with some lights on now. Can you see? I've highlighted in orange and green some dots. So, a light. Now let's imagine you have got a moving head that's probably cost you in excess of whatever your currency is, five or six hundred pounds, euros or dollars. It's a great moving head and it's got lots of effects but this is the key here. If you can't use smoke

From the public's perspective, when they're looking at that light, they're not looking at the effect the light is giving against the wall. They're looking at a dot that's moving around. That's all they can see. They can see a dot around about two or three inches in diameter. That's it! But that dot has cost you a lot of money. On the other hand, that could be some kind of just, I don't know, LED... So what I'm getting at here is that from the public's perspective, what they're seeing is some PA, which looks good, sounds hopefully, sounds good. Remember, invest good money in your PA because you need good sound. Anyway, that's a by-the-by. Your console and your lighting. So that's what they're looking at.

2:31 There are actual light bulbs

Now, some people who are old in the tooth will know where I'm coming from here. If we go back to, let's say, the late 60s or 70s, early 80s, even up to sort of the mid-80s, even probably early 90s, we had these light boxes. Some of them were from a company called Fowl. And what they were, it was a box with some sort of dichroic mirrors in the front of them. Light bulbs, yes. No, I'm not joking. There are actual light bulbs. And the light bulbs sometimes were painted different colours. It's crazy, yeah? These were the old school LED technology. Guys, it was a light bulb in a box. But what it did, it gave your light show depth. So when the public looked at you, they not only looked at the DJ, The console. But the DJ, him or herself, had lighting around them. It was big and it was bold and it looked good. So instead of little tiny pins of spots of lights, check these out. Now behind me I've got a Nova Pro podium and there it is. Can you see that no longer have we got dots of light, we've actually got something big and physical for people to look at.

Now that's what this video is about, showing you how you can take something like that or something like a laser or something like just even something like this. This is a UV. It's LEDJ stage wash UV. There you go. Something even like that and make your show look Aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Now here's the analogy, this is the analogy. You go into a restaurant and you're put in front of you two plates of food, alright? Just imagine a mound of curry on each plate. One plate is garnished with, you know, you've got lettuce on there, you've got tomatoes, you've got cucumber. You've got peppers. It looks pleasing to the eye. The other one is just a mound of the same mound on the other side, but that's it. Nothing else. White plate. End of. Which one would you look at first? Which one would be more pleasing to taste? It would be the one that's been garnished, that has been sort of time taken to make it look good so you're more likely to eat it. On the other hand, let's take that analogy.

4:54 Should I pause the camera?

On the other hand... Hopefully this video will inspire you and make you make your own decision on how you can maybe lighten up your show to make it look a bit more pleasing. So when people walk in, they're looking at the plate of food with the garnish around it, not just a plate of mush and then eventually tasting it and going, well it wasn't too bad but it didn't look very good. Think about it. Right, so I'm going to... Should I pause the camera? Yeah, I'll pause the camera and I'll get a light set up and I'll just... Stay there. Ah, pause the camera. So first off, all I've done, I've got a Trilighter 3 in there, in the podium. I've let it run through a different colour scheme and there you go. So imagine one of those or two or four either side of your DJ booth. Now you've got something that's eye candy. It looks good.

Also, there's no need to do Master Slave or DMX or anything like that. You can pretty much, with these lights, turn them on and just let them do their own thing. Also, with this light, you can get a controller so you can control the lighting, the colour if you want to. Alright, I'm going to pause the camera again and just change this a little bit. Right, I have changed the Nova Pro Podium slightly. All I've done is I've extended it. So now have a look. Check it out. I mean, that's pretty sexy actually. And look at it! You know, now we've got even more of a lighting effect. But we've got the lighting effect more of from exactly the same light which is down in there. I mean, it's a no-brainer. Hold on. Alright, so exactly the same podium. This time I've got the Laser World Garden Star Pro in there. Now that, it just looks...

7:41 I mean, God, how

Absolutely stunning. Again, it's a shame you're watching this over the web, but seriously, I promise you that looks so cool because you've got ambient light from the laser that's lighting up very vaguely the whole podium, but then you've got that movement as well. You see, so you've got movement, colour and lighting next to you. So again, like I said earlier. You know, people are coming into the room, they're dancing, they're looking at the lighting around the room, but also they will be looking at the lighting around you. Remember, you are the centre of the attention, of course, and the music as well. You see, there it is, OK? It's as simple as that. I mean, God, how... You know... Oh, blimey, I can't explain it. I can't make it simpler. There it is, put that down.

There it is, but we're not quite finished. I can show you more ideas. Hold tight, don't... Very quickly as well with this podium, all you do is to extend it. You just pull these out. I don't know if you can see, but they flick in. So I'm going to pull that out, pull it away from this little recess here where it will actually fit into and I can pull this up. Bearing in mind I'm using one hand at the moment. And hold on, I'm just going to flick those across. There, there and there. And then just let it... This is quite difficult actually when you're using only one hand. No, and that now should... Hold on. Fit into place. There you go. Sorted. So that is extended quite high. Now I'm six foot and that...

This is pretty much my height. That's not bad actually, not bad at all. Alright so what I've done now is I have extended it pretty much all the way as far as it can go. I've now got, oh by the way that was just a random laser I put down so I'll just move that out of the way. Yep we've got the Laser World laser in there as well as now we have the up-lighter. And we have at the top, now this is quite interesting because you see what I've done, I've got a derby in there and I've just brought down the scrim just enough so the effect can hit the wall. And then above that then, if you can see I haven't got it plugged in, I've got a moving head. Now how about that? You see so what I'm doing is I'm thinking outside of the box.

10:14 This is the beauty about lighting

This is the beauty about lighting. A light is there to do a certain job. And most people, and trust me, most people, DJs, mobile DJs, will plug the light in and let it do what it's supposed to do. But come on, use your head. Be inspirational. Just try out new ideas. Now you see that to me, OK, it does look good. It's serving a lot of purposes. And then on that, I've got the moving head. Now of course, you know, it would be secured correctly and of course because it's extended to its fullest height, I'd be an idiot just to leave that on the dance floor as it is. I would either make sure it's weighted down or what I would do, which I'm sure a lot of you have seen if you see the pictures on my gig logs...

Is I will have a bass speaker right next to the podium and then I'll have the bass speaker on one side of the podium so it's pretty much waiting it down so if someone did accidentally which inevitably it does happen when people have had a few many orange juices into it then of course it shouldn't really fall over but that is your responsibility as a professional mobile DJ You are responsible to make sure that all of your kit is in a position or a place where it will A, not get knocked over and B, not be in the way of members of the public. Now that just looks, that's fantastic because look at the effects I'm getting from that. That's stunning. That is amazing and again, nothing here is sound to light. It's pretty much doing, going through the motions of doing its own kind of little show. Alright, absolutely amazing.

I'm personally quite impressed with that actually. I think you should be as well. What I will do, in the description of this video, I will put information on all of the items I'm using and go and check it out. Just give it a go. Try and think outside the box and don't just think that your light show is about giving effects around the room. You need to be the effect as well. Thank you very much. Practice and enjoy. Nice one.

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