Production

MOST OF WHAT GOES INTO THE TICKET PRICE FOR A SKILLS EVENT IS THE COST OF THE PRODUCTION.

For months we draw out and pre-program the night from start to finish, planning every detail, so the night progresses and the love builds. Cutting edge lighting & video technology combined with careful planning is what inspires us. It is what we do best and it is what we love.

Remember that you are a part of that as an attendee and you contribute more than you possibly know.

4 Weeks until the LOVE iS HERE

During the next four weeks, we will give you a weekly
inside look on the production of Love After.

This week, it’s all about the Sound.

Part 1 – THE SOUND

“Hey Jason,

The system design for the Skills After Party at the Oracle Arena is based around a system called L’Acoustics V-DOSC. By choosing this line of loudspeakers I was able to come up with a set of subsystems that are designed to integrate with each other in such a way as to eliminate, as much as possible, the destructive interference that often occurs when utilizing main arrays, flown subwoofers, ground stacked subwoofer, offstage flown arrays, and front fill speaker systems. While the total number of cabinets or total wattage are not the most telling ways to describe the sound pressure and coverage capabilities of an arena sound system, I’ll rattle off a few specs anyway because, let’s face it, big numbers are fun!

36x V-DOSC elements (main arrays, 18 per side)
24x V-DOSC elements (side arrays, 12 per side)
16x SB218 Sub bass elements (flown subwoofer arrays to project sub bass to the highest reaches of the arena)
16x SB218 Sub bass elements (ground stacked in a time delayed arc to spread even subwoofer coverage throughout the main floor)
6x 108p front fill speakers (to cover the first 5 feet of the audience area in front of the stage)
At full tilt, the system will be capable of powering the loudspeakers with up to 250,000 watts of power from the digital, remotely controlled Camco amplifiers. The system will be tuned via wireless tablet control to ensure that the folks in the nether regions hear everything as clearly and powerfully as I do at the Front of House mix position.

I’ve designed, deployed, and operated large scale concert PA systems for over 10 years, have numerous accreditations in the fields of 3d loudspeaker array modeling and system measurement, and have designed loudspeakers. I’ve mixed for artists ranging from small acts playing local nightclubs to larger touring acts playing festivals for over 50,000 people. I’m looking forward to this special event very much!”

Gabe Nahshon
Delicate Productions

“Hey Jason,

The lighting. The lighting. The lighting. The reason I grew up on Skills is because of the lighting! When I bought tickets to my first Skills party, I was blown away at how much better the lighting was than every other party. I had been to parties where things like lighting, audio, video, and general safety issues were an oversight, and I’ve never bothered with those parties again. In my experience, you can tell how much producers care about their guests by how nice their events look. In this vein, I knew from the moment I saw my first Skills party that I had to be part of something this amazing. Since I hopped on board during the mid 2000′s (’05, if I’m not mistaken), I’ve seen the whole production keep growing and growing from what I saw from trance and house music parties to electronic music concerts. There’s a distinction here between parties and concerts. Skills can do parties, but Skills puts on concerts. After a deeply disheartening 1 year hiatus, we’re back, and we are bigger and badder than ever!

I’m very excited to say that we’ll be using some new fixtures this year. First off, we have the High End Systems Showguns. They’ve got a really cool circle of LED’s around the lens that almost make them look like flowers, and oh my god. The Showguns are PUNCHY! Just wait. Then there are the Martin Mac101′s, really cool all LED moving head fixtures. The Clay Paky Sharpies were used throughout the MTV VMA’s this year. I haven’t used these yet, but I can’t wait! If you liked the Mac250 Beams we’ve been using for our smaller shows, you’ll **** yourself when you see the Sharpies at the Oracle.We barely use 250w fixtures for our smaller shows anymore, so it’s mind boggling that we’re using Sharpies that are only 190 watts! Throw that all on top of the classic workhorse Martin Mac2000 Profiles, Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, Colorblast 12′s, and Colorblaze 72′s, and you’ve got yourself quite a LOVEly rig!

Conceptually, we are designing our lighting this year around a huge video element. This posed 2 challenges: we didn’t want the standard flat rectangle (boring!), nor did we want the video wall to outshine the lighting. So this year we’re serving up some depth with a curved video wall, moving “gills”, arches, and layers of upgraded punchy lights from top to bottom, front to back. We have the standard rock and roll lighting for lighting people, meaning there’s a front of house truss for front lighting and an upstage truss for backlighting; these will feature Martin Mac 3000 Profiles, Clay Paky Sharpies, and Martin Atomic 3000′s. Then there is the lighting show, which is more of the set and scenic. The “gills” is a mutated concept of an old idea, and it features truss that will move up and down throughout the night– something we rarely get to see anymore. These will have Mac 2000′s, Sharpies, and Atomic 3000′s. We’re complementing our standard truss DJ booth with truss arches this year; I’m calling it the DJ fort. It’s kind of ridiculous in a good way. We’re loading up the DJ fort with Martin Mac 301′s, Atomic 3000′s, Colorblast12′s, and Colorblazes. To finish off, we have some Showguns, Mac3000′s, and Mac 301′s on the deck like flowers coming out of the ground.

I’ve spent at least a good 7 days in meetings, brainstorming sessions, and drafting sessions. In order for us to see this ahead of time, I draft everything out in the CAD software, Vectorworks Spotlight, working out the different concepts that Jason, Andy, and I have been throwing around. When the rough concept is finalized, I place the lights where I’ll want to use them, then submit for re-approval from Jay and Andy. Then when I have the thumbs up, I spend a couple days making Ikea style instructions for our friends at the Union.

A lot (and I mean a LOT) of work goes into preparation for the event, and we LOVE every minute of it. We are Skills.

Love Afterparty 2011 Gear List:

- (1) Road Hog Full Boar dmx console

- (1) Wholehog 3 Expansion Wing

- (6) High End Systems Showgun

- (30) Martin Mac3000 profile

- (36) Martin Mac 301

- (12) Clay Paky Sharpie

- (24) Martin Atomic 3000

- (22) Color Kinetics Colorblast 12 TR

- (15) Color Kinetics Colorblaze 72

- (8) Foggers

- (8) Hazers

Thanks for keeping things moving forward. It’s inspiring.”

-allan susanto

Lighting programmer and co-designer for Skills events

I’ve been working with the Skills team to produce custom, over the top websites and visuals since 2007. Working with Skills has been inspiring. The production and energy that go on for months behind the scenes is just as amazing as what is experienced on the day of the event, and it’s very cool to be a part of pulling it all together. The visuals you will see on the screen at the after party were all custom made for this party and were based on Jasons vision of a techy, geometric yet organic world the party goer will be emersed in.

I mostly use Adobe CS5 for everything I do for Skills including website work and graphics. I use a Boxx Tech, Dual 6 core womputer with 12 gigs of RAM and a solid state 3gbs per second hard drive. In addition I am using the highest end NVIDIA Quadro video card with 3gigs of memory and over 400 cuda cores.All of these geeky details have one purpose – to deliver custom visuals worthy of the vibe at a Skills event. Seeing it all come together, makes it all worth it.

Working with Jason and the Skills family has been a very positive force in my life, transforming me into what I am today. The custom content that I created and that you will be seeing at the show is specific to the Skills Lovevolution After party.

I will be at the show enjoying everyone’s hard work. Hope to see you there.

Luke Shedd
Crushworx

Jason,

Let me just say, WOW can’t even describe it…

You are in for something epic.

This is my third event with Skills, and like everything else, it keeps getting better!!

This setup is MASSIVE… Not only do we control an IN-YOUR-FACE LED wall in front of the DJ, we blast the crispiest video on a HUGE LED screen, at least 3x the size of WOW, behind them for all the crowd to drool over. With TriggerFingers, Oxygen8s, Ipads with TouchOSC everywhere, two monitors and two FAT computers, our setup in the back will be just as big as that of the DJs themselves… We have so much stuff, we had to create a custom interface into our SOFTWARES just to run it. That’s right, we will be running a hybrid of programs for this event, just because we want to make it the best we possibly can. We are gonna mix inputs from three cameras above and around the DJ into our set and create visuals from the sound we get from your mix as well as that of the crowd. With that we can create endless combinations of video that is purely based off of what we experience ourselves that night. Sweet.

A total of 4 inputs, 5 outputs, a VGA capture card to connect the computers, an Edirol V4 for the raw camera footage and 2 LIVE screens. It’s such a massive system this year that I had to bring along another PIXEL Shaker Manet to help me out.

Hundreds of new clips created just for this event by ‘doctor’ Luke, mixed with the arsenal of our own content is sure to blow something up..

So watch out.

The TRI-FORCE of Alan, David, and Manet will be in FULL EFFECT.

And believe me… we will go out of control.

I can’t wait to rock it..

-David Gastaneta

One Part of The PIXEL Shakers

Hey Jason,For this year’s Skills party, we are glad to present our new Oracle Black Widow TR- 10mm transparent LED walls! Using over 200 LED panels, our walls will span the 34 ft x 25ft. With the new design of the Black Widow, we will create an angled design, Giving the stage depth and creating a unique canvas for the VJ. In combination with the lighting, the visuals on the transparent LED walls will produce extraordinary effects providing a unique party experience for Skills! However, words don’t do justice when describing this experience, you have to see it for yourself!

Isaac Campos
President/CEO

Global Trend Pro, Inc.

Cryogenics/CO2 effects are just one of the many different types of effects that will be at the After Party.
Along with 24 jets, we will have 8 confetti cannons which are powered by co2 compressed air and are without question, the most efficient and effective Electric Remote Controllable Confetti Cannon available.