So, you have VJed a few clubs and parties and decided "Heh, i'm not getting enough for this! I wanna run my own night and roll in the money!" (We've all thought about it!). Then you think, "Oh Sh*t! I know nothing about sound sytems and lighting" (All those other "Oh Sh*t" moments will be covered in my later articles). For this reason I'm writing you all a guide to gigging in laymens terms.
Sound and lighting are two of the most important properties of your event and so they do need a bit of effort put into them! Firsty you need to decide what sort of event you are holding; is it a rock gig with visuals? a dance event with visuals? or is it a night orientated arround the visuals completely? Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can consider what lighting aond sound you need.

Sound

For any event, the sound has to be right. If you have too big a system (yes it is possible) it will not only look silly, but you are likely to deafen people, piss off enviromental health and most importantly sound awful! People are needed to absorb the sound or it bounces off everything and sounds real bad! System size is something that you need to learn over time. There is no hard and fast rule, you will pick it up over time and learn to recognise which venue needs what system. To start with, ask a local PA hire company. They may have used the venue before and will know what to put in. Soon you will be able to recognise a bass trap from a mile off!

The quality of the system is also an issue that you may have to consider. Many venues have sound systems in which arent as good as others. Go in, have a listen. If you dont like it, go to your local PA company and ask for a quote for a system. You may even find that it is cheaper to hire a system in! Remeber ALWAYS listen to what you are paying for!

You will need a way of getting you sound from video to the sound system. This will generaly consist (during a dj gig) of a small mixer. You can run the DJ into a couple of channels and your stuff into the rest of the channels. This way you can engineer your own events. Even if you are using the venue's system, you may want a small mixer to allow you control over levels. Let the PA company (at least for your first few events) to control all the outboard effects. They know what they are doing and can make it sound right.

If you are having anything live, you will need "live desk" and a friend (or hire someone) who can mix live bands. Don't try it yourself! It take a lot of experience!

That's about it for sound. Don't be shy. Get quotes and barter on the price! Belive me, the price that you first get is way more than you should be paying ;-)

Lighting

Lighting is very dependent on what you envisage your night to be like. There are two main types of light: Generics and Intelligent. Generic covers parcans, fresnels etc. These are dimmable lights which produce a wash or spot of one colour (generally). Mainly these are used at rock gigs, but you may want to use several of them to do a colour wash over your venue. Then you can use more to do another wash and fade between them.

You can also use them to light the DJ/VJ and/or band. Play with them and have fun. Dont be afraid to experiment. The hire company or veune should ahve a wide vairety of "gels" which colour the light, so play with them and work out which colours look good together. For these you will mostly need dimmers and a board to controll them from. The venue may have these buil in if you are using their lighting, but always ask!

Inteligent lights are those that you see in most clubs. They rnage from moonflowers which put out several beams of rotating light to scanners, a beam reflected off a mirror arround the room, to moving heads where the entire light moves (very cool)! Ask your local hire company for a demo, then see what you like. Dont forget to ask what colours and gobos (beam shapes) are available. Also ask of they are sound-to-light, otherwise you will need to get a desk and spend all night running it!

As with sound, ask the hire company. You may even want to hire a lighting engineer in to do the lights for you! Just remeber to explain what you want, and if he suggests someting you dont like, tell him!

So I guess thats about it! This is very very basic! I will get onto the complexities of eveything and other aspects of your night at a later date! I hope you have enjoyed this and if you have any questions, PM me.