With its expansion to the famed Strip, Fontainebleau Las Vegas has launched LIV Las Vegas, the city’s newest nightlife destination, which Lighting Designer Stephen Lieberman has illuminated with an array of Ayrton fixtures controlled by a grandMA3 light console. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton and MA Lighting products in North America.
Fontainebleau Las Vegas brings a new era of luxury hospitality to the Strip and promises a night like no other at its LIV Las Vegas nightclub. The LIV brand from Groot Hospitality was born at the iconic Fontainebleau Miami in 2008. Now, its 50,000 square-foot counterpart in Las Vegas delivers high-energy, A-list entertainment to that city’s clubgoers making its 2,000 guests feel in the middle of the EDM action.
Lieberman, who is President of LA-area SJ Lighting, which specializes in production systems for nightlife and hospitality, already had designed the lighting for LIV Miami when his firm was hired to design and develop the theatrical system for LIV Las Vegas. His team worked in collaboration with BWA Architects, Rockwell Group interior designers and Sound Investment AV audio designers.
“One of the challenges was having all the designers come together from different cities and make everything look coordinated – that’s as daunting a task as the actual design work,” Lieberman explains. “The theatrical lighting needed to include hybrid fixtures, wash lights to balance the look, strobes, LED strip lights, lasers and LED video panels with a high level of automation.
“The space is very fluid with a very clean layout and great sight lines: You’re able to do a lap around the first floor and second-level mezzanine and not get stuck in a dead end,” he says. “Whether you are at a table or a bar, you’re an active participant in the show, and we did our best to make the experience as immersive as possible.”
The interior has soft, curved radial lines with an hourglass-shaped ceiling feature composed of two connected ellipses that move up and down. Another ellipse encloses six-part LED video panels, which also move up and down. “There’s a lot of motion over the dance floor for a very animated environment,” Lieberman notes. Tables surround the dance floor and the mezzanine with bars left and right. The central DJ booth has enough counter space in front to serve as a performance stage, while coveted VIP tables are inside the booth.
Having had “good success with Ayrton Diablos in the past” Lieberman decided to use them at LIV Las Vegas. “We love their clean optics and nice aesthetic, and they have the right feature set,” he reports. Forty-four Diablos do the heavy lifting throughout the space providing clean, even coverage from positions in the automated ellipses and under the mezzanine where they create layers of light.
The Diablos are supported by 48 Ayrton MagicDot SX luminaires. “We wanted to stay with the same manufacturer for the moving lights for ease of coordination,” says Lieberman. “The MagicDots are compact, bright washes with zoom capabilities. Their 360º pan and tilt is an added feature for the rig.”
Six Ayrton Levantes are mounted near the stage for special looks and key lighting for the DJs and performers. “The Levantes were new to us, but when you build spaces like this having the right equipment for specials is critical. Sometimes you have to allocate fixtures that are already part of the show. But here we didn’t have to sacrifice part of the big rig to light other positions. The Levantes have enough firepower, even when they’re throttled back, to cut through video and other lighting. They do exactly what we need them to do.”
He notes that his company’s close relationship with ACT Entertainment was a big factor in his use of Ayrton fixtures for LIV Las Vegas. “It’s important to us to not only choose quality equipment but also to have people who stand behind it supporting the gear. Having ACT behind the Ayrton line meant a lot to us.”
A grandMA3 light console controls lighting from a position in the DJ booth. It is interconnected with the video and automation control systems. “I’ve been using grandMA since the original version back in 2001, and we’re running grandMA3 in clubs now,” Lieberman reports. “The light’s smaller footprint is key where space is at a premium. We programmed the system and trained the staff. We like to think we have a good philosophy of how to lay out the console intuitively in terms of what’s important to the operator. Within 48 hours the in-house operators felt very comfortable with the system.” He also noted, “Everything is performing fantastically. The support we got from ACT was paramount to the success of the venue.”
