It does not take a large budget or ambitious design to revitalize a local lounge into a dynamic new space. It just takes ingenuity and know-how. A case in point: Ian Hoffer’s transformation of the interior look for the Level 2 nightclub in Harrisburg, PA. “It’s an upscale restaurant and lounge,” he tells PLSN. “But it just had gotten stale and needed a fresh look.”
Prior to Hoffer’s renovation, the Harrisburg Lounge was a more modest space. It had no video screens, moving lights, gobos, or projections. Further, the tables did not light up; they were just standard wooden tops. “The owner had a limited amount of money to spend, and he was looking to get the biggest visual impact he could get within his range,” explains Hoffer.
“An LED wall was completely out of his price range,” Hoffer adds. “Light-up tables are nothing new in the big city, but there, it was a novelty. He wanted the table to light up, and I just facilitated it and showed him how we could get it done and do it with a simple, rechargeable ADJ light.”
for video, “putting in standard landscape screens on the wall was boring, even out in Harrisburg,” Hoffer continues. “We put in five 60-inch flat screens portrait style, and we fed them cool ambient background stuff up there from Resolume, so it looks more like portraits hanging on the wall.”
With no VJ or lighting operator on site, Hoffer had the owner buy a number of video clips from Resolume’s website that were all arranged in playlists so that they would run automatically. There is also the option for a manager to manually select something special if needed.
“Since there’s no lighting operator, it’s all set to go from ambient to ambient to ambient,” says Hoffer. “Some of them are more high-energy, for later in the night, and some of them are really soft — little balls falling from the sky — for the beginning of the night.”
Level 2 is L-shaped, measuring about 125 feet long and 25 feet deep. All of the renovations were done in the VIP room in the narrow part of the “L.” There, visitors can view five 60-inch LG plasma TVs — three on the longer wall, and two on the shorter section.
Overhead, four Elation Spot LED Pro II moving lights sweep the room with projected gobos. The room also features four Acclaim Rebel Eye RGB fixtures — two of which light up the dance platform. As there is no operator, the lighting system runs off a preprogrammed touch screen controller that managers can operate with a minimal level of training.
Translucent Surfaces
Along with the other new lighting and video elements, the renovated nightclub adds to the ambience with color-changing LED units within 23 “cocktail cubes” — tables with translucent tops measuring about 2 by 2.5 feet (WxD). Each is equipped with an ADJ Mega Go Bar 50 LED fixture.
To enhance the output of the lighting inside, Hoffer had the club line the inside of every cube with white reflective contact paper. He notes that the lights inside do not point straight up, but on an angle. Given the minimal throw distance between the LED fixtures inside and the translucent surface, this helps minimize hotspots and add a more diffused lighting effect.
Along with the table tops, the club features diffused lighting through frosted window panes, which were installed before Hoffer was brought on board. He makes full use of their potential with the new lighting system. “There are a whole bunch of programs where the moving lights will hit the frosted [windows] with various gobos and whatnot,” he notes, adding that “the first floor has a really nice restaurant owned by the same guy, so when the club is not open, sometimes they’ll just have the moving heads hit the frosted glass upstairs.”
“Dark and Lively”
Many American bars and lounges operate with an atmosphere that is dimly lit, but many also lack ambiance. Lighting up the cocktail cubes and using the moving lights gives the Harrisburg Lounge a little more flair. “It’s still dark in there,” notes Hoffer. “There is still haze. But instead of being dark and dead, it’s dark and lively.”
Hoffer, who has extensive experience working on EDM related events and venues including Philadelphia’s Soundgarden Hall (PLSN, “Installations,” Dec. 2012), took care to ensure that the lighting system within Level 2 was appropriate to the venue’s needs and budget, and “not too high-tech and expensive and complicated to use, especially because there’s no one there to run it. It also couldn’t be cheap and gaudy looking,” he adds, or too over-the-top. “In this place, it’s not like you can have somebody out there flashing strobe lights. There’s no point in selling him $2,000 worth of strobe lights if nobody’s going to flash them.”
Although the system is designed to run with minimal lighting expertise on site — the managers are able to operate it after getting three nights of technical training — he did have to return to troubleshoot and resolve one quirky glitch.
“It was one of those problems that goes into my top 10 of unusual things,” remarks Hoffer. “They had an old lighting controller that had been mounted on the wall — it predated me; I didn’t install it. The way it worked was when this product was receiving a signal from another controller, that signal would pass through it and control the light. If the main controller is turned off, then this thing will send out preprogrammed scenes. So if your main controller is disconnected, you’ll still have some control.”
The glitch that transpired caused the lights to do weird things — to not respond, or to flash on and off by themselves. “It turns out that their electrician had been installing a new outlet next to the haze machine, which had a DMX line connected with a non-locking connector, and he somehow knocked it out part of the way,” explains Hoffer. “A couple of the pins were making contact and a couple weren’t. Both controllers were sending out a signal, because the little box in the middle was getting something but not a full signal, so it was trying to take over. But the other main controller was still sending, so it was merging two DMX signals together, which is never good. The lights were flashing on and off, and they couldn’t control anything. I fixed it for them, but it took me an hour just to explain what had happened.”
As a one-man operation for all of his jobs, Hoffer designs, sells the equipment, and terminates and programs everything. “I just don’t do the specific labor stuff,” he clarifies. “Whoever the venue is, they have to hire their own electrician to operate under my direction. It works out great. In this case, I got them everything, I told the electrician where to put the TVs, where to put the lights, and then I set the addresses and programmed the system.”
?? Getting it Done
Hoffer likes flying solo. He knows what he wants, and he invokes the classic but true cliché that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. “For the projects that I can’t do myself, I’ll give them direction on how to do what I want.” For Soundgarden Hall in Philadelphia, Hoffer notes, “I drew it out, did the CAD drawings, showed them how to mount the pipes, and their electrician did the work. But then at the same time, it was one of those things where there were budget issues. In the end, I got up there on a lift and terminated 54 moving lights on my own. I stayed there overnight for a week and got it done.”
Level 2 Nightclub, Harrisburg, PA
GEAR
4 Elation Platinum Spot LED Pro II fixtures
4 Acclaim Rebel Eye RGB fixtures
23 ADJ Mega Go Bar 50 RGBA fixtures
5 60” LG plasma screens
1 Viewsonic 27” screen (booth preview monitor)
1 iMac 21” screen
1 Korg Nanokontrol MIDI controller
1 Resolume Avenue software package
