On Friday, March 1, 2024 the trajectory of the Loud Movies R&D efforts took an enormous upward swing as two 26ft trucks arrived from Las Vegas loaded with over 18,000lbs of equipment contained in 90 equipment cases. This was the result of Andy getting incredibly lucky in an online auction the week before; one in which every item sold for far below what it was worth. Initially the plan was to get a single DMX-controlled pan/tilt fixture to accelerate the team’s exploration of the options for interfacing with and controlling such lights. After the first lot sold for less than 10% of its used value, Andy went nuts bidding on (and winning) lot after lot.
Once the dust settled, the reality set in – we now have access to over 40 moving head lights, dozens of LED bars, two 20,000 lumen projectors, and an LED dance floor consisting of over 270 half-meter tiles. Getting this equipment from Las Vegas to LA was not going to be the hard part; the issue now was finding a home for it all that would allow the team to access and use it to further their experimentation.
Thankfully, LA is a town filled with creative technologists and those involved in immersive entertainment. The equipment was welcomed with open arms into two different locations. The majority of the lights went to a complex focused on hosting live events and immersive experiences. The projectors, LED floor, and remaining lights went to live in a studio that focuses on pulling cutting edge technologies and creatives together in order to experiment with new forms of immersive and interactive entertainment.
Owning this equipment will afford us an opportunity to test new ideas rapidly, and accelerate our experimentations significantly. Specifically the LED floor (lovingly named “Dancy McDancefloor” or “Dancy” for short) will provided many options to expand the films beyond a rectangular 2D screen and create actually immersive short films and music videos that fully surround the audience.
