Southern California’s newest event, meeting and production space, AV, in southern California’s Orange County, has installed a large state-of-the-art Elation Professional automated lighting system. Designed by leading industry professionals to be the ultimate one-stop for events of all sizes, nearly 200 Elation lights are used to create virtually any atmosphere a client desires.
Located inside entertainment production company N-EFFECT Productions’ new design studio and headquarters in Irvine, AV is a customisable event space that encompasses 25,000 sq ft of space. The latest in event technologies — an intelligent Elation lighting system, 30 ft LED wall, and full concert sound system — as well as an in-house event and production staff, make it the perfect space for corporate meetings, weddings, galas, social and civic events.
“People are really blown away by what they see when they walk in the door here,” stated Kris Plourde, owner of N-EFFECT Productions and CEO of AV. “They always comment on the lighting. Most concert venues would have something like this but not an event space or a production space.”
At N-EFFECT Productions, where Kris produced about 400 events a year off site, clients were often asking for a different experience whether it be a unique venue or a concert or club-type feel, he said. Three years ago Kris began development on AV and built the venue from the ground up as a purpose-built, turnkey location with all production included, something that was completely unique for clients.
“We took all the things we had learned on the road, on tours and on special events and tried to bring them all into one location that made it easy not only for our team to be able to run shows but for outside production companies to come in and be able to operate in a venue,” he stated. “It’s often hard to go into a venue and work with what they have or be able to create your looks with what they have. Other production companies can come into our venue and it’s plug and play, they can access our board and plug into our patch.”
Kris worked with Raul Fonseca, Elation’s Regional Sales Manager, about what products to put in the venue. After several different products were demoed, eventually a lighting design was created. The choice was made to outfit AV with Elation Platinum SBX hybrid moving heads, high-output Platinum Beam 5R Extreme beam moving heads, Platinum Wash ZFX Pro ZL moving head wash luminaires, DW Profile dynamic white light LED ellipsoidal fixtures, and Event Bar 4-head white LED pinspots.
“They all have their purpose,” Kris said of the product choices. “We wanted to have a variety of fixtures for all types of events whether they’re more music-based events or corporate events or weddings. We wanted a variety of fixtures that could cover every aspect that you would need whether it’s a wall wash or pinspot or large moving light effects, we wanted to have a little bit of everything in our system. The number of fixtures we have and how we have them set up is perfect for our space.”
The Platinum Wash ZFX Pro ZL fixtures with their 15W RGBW LEDs and output comparable to a 1200W wash fixture are typically used for wall washes or product spots. The Event Bars create a massive full room effect with 36 fixtures creating 144 individual pinspots, while the Platinum Beam 5R Extremes serve as the workhorse of the rig. The versatile Platinum SBX hybrid fixtures are used for anything from texturing to gobo projections to stage washes. AV also has an inventory of Platinum Beam fixtures, which they use to add stage or room fill to events when needed. AV features a 9,000 sq ft main room with 27 ft ceilings, which is a lot of room to fill with lighting atmosphere. The different fixture types and the ability to create layered looks can be used to fill the space no matter what is required, from a high-energy setting with lots of firepower to more intimate looks. AV’s on-site team creates customised lighting designs for each individual client and programs the lighting looks.
Kris was confident in what he wanted for the venue and although he had to deal with a host of suitors, he said the decision to go with Elation wasn’t difficult. “When we started this project a lot of companies courted us and a lot of companies reached out to us and had heard what we were doing,” he said. “Pretty much every major manufacturer wanted to have their fixtures in this building. At the end of the day it came down to Elation, not only because of our previous experience with our offsite productions but they are great fixtures at a great price point that really do the job. It was an easy choice for us to go with Elation on this project. Everything’s been great so far and the venue looks amazing.”
