Planet Angel - Live an Ordinary Life in an Extraordinary Way

We use quite a lot of techie kit and are not afraid of getting stuck in, we've even built our own mad lighting controller to make sure the lights were totally in sync with the beat. 

We also use digital projectors and welcome VJs… We often webcast our parties and have the necessary audio kit to make a decent webcast.  The AV Techie team often arrive first for a rig, work through the Party, and leave last!

Lighting

We reckon the importance of good lighting is often overlooked, which is interesting when you consider light and sound are key elements of any good party! Its not that they are not used or people don't spend money on them, just that lights are rarely used as 'part' of the music and vice versa. The aim of Planet Angel's light show is to integrate seamlessly with the whole environment; the vibe, the art, the music, the time of day or night... everything!
 
Our policy re: lighting is to own as much of the kit used at events as possible and we have built up quite a lot of kit as a result. Some of the key units have been custom built so that Planet Angel has a unique lighting system that integrates with the music with more synchronicity and ‘feel’ than other systems. For example the Analogue Lighting Controller analyses the music and lets the operator sync the lights to many different aspects of the music, including low-beat, hi-beat, silence, inverse and logical combinations of those mentioned and many others. It also can detect ‘trancy’ passages of music and trigger lights/lasers accordingly. Using careful analysis and logic functions we can sync the lights perfectly to the bass or hi-hat beat even allowing for bulb warm-up times.

Interestingly our system has led to the conclusion that you can’t use filament bulbs to sync perfectly to the beat because the strike and after-glow cycle is too long – even with compensation techniques, when we do it with strobes, however, Wo! It is dead on the beat, what we need to do to perfect the system, is use LED bulbs.. We are currently evaluating LED technology for two reasons: a) so that we can develop a new very environmentally friendly system and eventually replace all of the wasteful ‘traditional’ bulbs, which means a much lower power system with less storage and less waste of power and resources (glass, metal etc); and b) so that we can offer Party People the tightest, most synched lighting system ever(!), further heightening the experience in the Meltdown Room and at other Planet Angel events.

AV

We use a couple of digital projectors (that we own), one for general visual effects and another one to project a playstation game.  We prefer to use unusual screens and projection surfaces and have worked with a number of talented VJs to create some great effects.  We see projectors as a great tool for creating a visual environment but believe that if badly set up they can sometimes produce too much spill or ambient light.

Webcast

We often webcast our Parties.  We are fortunate enough to have the support of a web streaming company who provide the pipe for the webcasts (please see the Crew & Contributor Page).  We also have the mixer, compressor and mikes to be able to provide a high quality stream feed complete with crowd noise and talk over.  We are interested to hear from any organisations that may be interested in re-streaming our webcasts.

Getting Involved Technically

If you’re a VJ and would like to get involved, please see the Artists & Performers page, if you’re a Techie and would like to get involved please see the Crew page. If you have your own ideas for technical contributions please see the Contacts Page.