Las Vegas’ Green Valley Ranch takes in a big club install for the Ovation nightclub.
Nightclubs behave differently than your standard show. Whereas a backstage area normally provides a relative sanctuary from the crush of the crowd, nightclubs are a different beast. Every inch of the space is a stage unto itself, with every guest trying to put on their own show. This presents a lighting designer with a combination of challenges and opportunities unique to the club installation.
The new Ovation Lounge, which opened its doors on Friday, May 11, in Las Vegas’ Green Valley Ranch Resort, has occupancy of roughly 350 guests. But the lighting rig installed by Las Vegas-based 4Wall Entertainment can compete with rigs in much larger venues. 4Wall’s Buddy Pope served as designer and project manager for the installation, and 4Wallers Joe Buttry and James LeBlanc assisted him as install technicians.
Gotta Have the Gear
The rig installed at the Ovation contains what Pope called “an absurd amount of gear;” with more than 100 fixtures of both automated and conventional. The conventional fixtures include ETC Source Fours, with 15 19-degree, 10 26-degree and 15 36-degree units, in addition to 20 Source Four PARs. For the ellipsoidals to add some color to the atmosphere, Pope spec’d 20 Ocean Optics SeaChanger color changers. The gear also includes six Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, 15 Vari*Lite VL2500 Spots, five Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots and 30 High End Systems Studio Command 700s. And if these 116 fixtures aren’t completely over-the-top for a club of this size, consider this: there are also four High End Systems DL.2 digital luminaires.
To control the rig, 4Wall supplied the Ovation with a Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC with a Wholehog III expansion wing. The console runs eight universes, with four running directly out of the console and four more through a DMX Widget. These outputs are then distributed to 15 ETC Net2 nodes.
Surprisingly enough, the real eye candy in the club, though, is the trussing. Supplied by Tomcat, the trussing consists of sections that radiate from a central point, allowing for different lighting looks throughout the space. With the various positions the truss grid can execute, the rig can change the entire atmosphere in a single cue. The two Reel EFX DF- 50 hazer machines add to the atmosphere by making the aerial beams visible.
The Ovation differs from normal nightclubs in one very important way — it’s built around a stage. House band Rich & Famous fills in most nights, with other mid-list acts taking the stage on a regular basis. The club opened up with Big Bad VooDoo Daddy, and has Rick Springfield, Grand Funk Railroad and Kool & The Gang lined up to play.
Video plays a role in the Ovation’s narrative, too. Multiple hi-def video screens above the bar make you feel less like a bar-goer and more like a club-hopper. If this sort of environment inspires you to get out of the house, then the Ovation might be the right place to head. The stage also augments its presence by the use of video. When acts are performing onstage, video provides guests with hi-def I-mag.
Give ‘Em What They Want
According to Pope, Green Valley Ranch management “wanted this to be a flagship, top-notch room.” Having already completed club installs from Las Vegas to Lake Tahoe in the last year, 4Wall took the contract with the intention of accommodating their request. Though Pope designed the lighting, Ovation and Stations Casinos management — the parent company for Green Valley Ranch — had what Pope called “an active hand” in the design and planning of the venue. Kevin Scroggins and Jeff Thompson, both of Green Valley Ranch, communicated their wants and needs to Pope and the 4Wall team, who then executed those ideas.
While relationships like this can sometimes be tenuous, Pope told PLSN that he and his team have worked with Stations Casinos long enough on various projects to be able to work in concert. As Pope puts it, “We know the formula for how they need things.”
Of course, what would any install be without some challenges? The biggest challenge was the ceiling height — certainly not an unusual challenge in a club installation. But this one was only 14 1/2 feet above the deck. Add to that the fact that the truss was pre-assembled before delivering it to the club with the idea that the walls could be moved to accommodate it. But it was discovered after the fact that the walls could not in fact be moved. Nevertheless, the crew persevered and somehow got the job done.
For the stage area, multiple floor pockets were installed to accommodate stage power and data distribution in order to provide flexibility for incoming bands. Most of the cable running to the rig has been kept entirely airborne to the feet of the masses from treading on the high-voltage and data cabling. All told, the install, part of phase three of a major project involving multiple areas of the casino, took from November of last year until last month — about seven months altogether.
Done and Done
Now that the Ovation is functional, control of the rig passes off entirely to Green Valley ranch and Ovation personnel. Pope told PLSN that there would be a corps of a few techs who will program and operate the Hog iPC. Among those crewmembers set to work behind the console is Scott Preston. Pope and his crew patched the console and set it up so that it’s ready to program, but all the cues will be written by in-house club techs. Ovation and Green Valley Ranch will also handle all the maintenance on the system now that the install is complete.
The Ovation has squeezed quite an arsenal of gear into a 350-capacity venue, and there’s no way to tell how these things play out until they get rolling. But in Vegas, the odds are always in favor of the house. Green Valley Ranch might be a hike off of the Strip, but all the locals will tell you that if you want to win, off the Strip is where you want to go.
An Ovation for the Gear
10 ETC Source Four 26-Degree Ellipsoidals
15 ETC Source Four 19-Degree Ellipsoidals
15 ETC Source Four 36-Degree Ellipsoidals
20 ETC Source Four PARs
4 High End Systems DL.2 Digital Luminaires
30 High End Systems Studio Command 700s
6 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes
1 Flying Pig Systems Hog iPC Console w/Wing
1 High End Systems F100 Fog Generator
15 Vari*Lite VL2500 Spots
5 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots
2 Reel EFX DF-50 Haze Machines
5 Tomcat 10-Foot 12”x12” Light Duty Truss
3 Tomcat 5-Foot 12”x12” Light Duty Truss
