Planning a party in London
So it’s been a while since I’ve blogged and I’ve never really put in much information on what life is like behind the decks so this blog is all about the preparation, build-up and hard work that goes into putting on an event. The biggest myth for DJ’s is that we get paid the best salary in the world, to turn up, play on the decks for a couple of hours then go. The thing people seem to forget is the preparation, the loading and unloading that happens four times and the physical labour this takes. By the end of the night all you want to do is lie on the dancefloor and fall asleep, however, you know you need to clear and pack away all the equipment as quickly as possible to get the venue cleared then get back to your base and unload it all so you can finally rest.
DJ Equipment for a London DJ
All throughout December, the majority of our work was in London providing DJs at the London Film Museum in Covent Garden, if you haven’t visited this museum I would highly recommend it. It’s got a great James Bond exhibition at the moment with all the Bond cars and even a James Bond Scalextric, now that is good fun to play with. However back to the story in hand, we’d been preparing for these events for a while with a lot of emails flying back and forth between the venue and ourselves planning the songs, the setup and the playlists but nothing ever prepares you for the real work in hand. We started by loading up our van earlier that day at around 1 pm with the Premier DJ Package, this included two extremely heavy Wharfedale speakers that seem to get heavier every time you carry them, the necessary amplifiers for the speakers, two moving head martin mini mac lights which we would run as a pair on sound to light mode and four additional uplighters to put around the venue. We also used an S&H DJ booth, this is probably the most professional DJ booth about and has a starlight cloth made of LEDs that goes around the metal frame. So the loading finished at about 1.30 pm and then we sat down and started planning all the songs and checking we had everything audio-wise loaded on the MacBooks.
Venue Setup with DJ Lighting
We set off on our journey from our base in Watford to Covent Garden at about 4.30 pm to give us plenty of time for the 7 pm start, the M1 was clear as always into London and there were a few queues going past Brent Cross with the usual Christmas shoppers but the real traffic hit as we got out of Regents Park and hit the Euston Road, this was at a crawl but luckily by leaving so early we were able to take our time through this. We wiggled our way through the back streets of London and arrived outside the front of the Film Museum at about 5.15 pm, liaising with the venue staff we were directed to the rear loading bay, from what we had been told before we expected this to be a large ramp that went down into the studios below where the event was being held. We spent about ten minutes looking for this non-existent large ramp and found it to be a small alley that went down into the museum, we then rushed about carrying all the equipment nipping through the kitchens and around the exhibitions to get it setup. The unload of everything itself took about 15 to 20 minutes with the setup taking half an hour. We had been put in what is usually the bar and relaxation area but in this instance had been cleared out and hire sofas had been put in to make the area double up as a dance floor plus mingling bar zone. Around the room, we set up a range of up lighters and also installed moving lights into the ceiling truss area plus a star cloth DJ booth in the centre of the room. Once everything was set up the party was ready to begin.
Read more about that in our next blog post.
London Film Museum Events
If you are considering having a party in London and require a venue with a DJ and great entertainment why not try the London Film Museum in Covent Garden which provides a disco for all events including corporate, Christmas and birthday parties plus for promotional events.
