Jam Productions, a five-year-old company based in Cairns, mostly designs and executes medium to large conferences in capital cities, but also love to be involved with large scale activations a few times a year. They have been very lucky over the past five years to gain some awesome clients who take them all over the place, as a corporate-focused company their busy season is usually from March – October. Like everyone else in the industry, work came to a grinding halt eight days prior to their first large Gala Dinner for the year. Like most, they learned new business words like pivot, Covid Safe Plans, and social distancing – none of which would help any serious dollars come in the door in fact the exact opposite.
“Living In Cairns Australia and having a winter with not a lot to work on could be much worse, especially after talking to all my close Melbourne friends,” Justin Ogge, Director of Jam Productions. “As beautiful as Cairns winter is, we still had no work or future work on the cards. The thought of the past five years of busting ourselves and taking very little ourselves so we could grow could all be for nothing! This definitely still kept us up at night and when you could finally sleep would be the first thing you think of when opening your eyes.”
Then, the strangest thing happened, after QLD came out of its lockdown in April and winter looming all the travelers headed north including the backpackers that were still left in the country. So very quickly, backpacker hostels became full, with restaurants and clubs either shut or restricted numbers the backpackers had nowhere to go and party!
After already upgrading the lighting at a couple of the backpacker hostels Jam was so pleased to be asked to come up with a lighting design for Mad Monkey in central Cairns, as owner Peter McLeay saw a great opportunity to create an awesome space in his already licensed venues.
“There was not much of a brief other than needing to draw people down a 25m dark alleyway so they will come in and have a beer, and of course as they had also been shut for months, for the cheapest price possible ….. always the way, especially now,” added Justin. “So with the first hint of a gig in months, Michael and I took off our fishing and wakeboarding hats and put the creative hats back on. We first decided to light the canopy in the eating area with some Beemz IP rated Pars from DJ City, an awesome Par for the price to splash some colour around, and then create the ambiance with very large LED vintage globes with a very nice dimmer curve (hard to find) with each string on a separate dimmer of course for later in the night.”
The guys then looked at the entrance and the 25m dark alleyway, budget was tight so they opted for twelve more IP-rated Pars – job done. Then they found out the whole alleyway was going to be graffitied by an artist and they were hoping our Pars would help make the Aircon units disappear!
“Initially I thought hmmm not really, in fact, quite the opposite,” added Justin. “Then I thought back to my time in Bali on one of the small islands where the roadway was lined with colourful umbrellas, it just looked awesome, so we pitched the idea of lining the alleyway with 50 clear umbrellas to catch the light and deflect it with all strange angles and they loved the idea, and the cost.”
Jam had one more trick up their sleeve involving motion sensors and projection. Michael came up with the idea of content on the ground that would react to passersby and the venue decided on the Mad Monkey logo on the ground out the front of the alleyway. The logo turns into a ‘come inside for a beer’ graphic as you walk past along with a smoke effect. Combined with an alleyway of light, it was impossible for passersby not to be intrigued by what was going on inside.
After this design and installation, three more local backpacker venues asked Jam to help revamp their spaces (on a budget of course) and they were more than happy to jump on board. Although these installs are a drop in the ocean compared to their normal turnover, the guys enjoyed having a purpose again, the same purpose that keeps our industry going because we definitely don’t do it for the money.
16 x Beamz BWA520 LED Parcan IP65 14x18W
42 x led Dimmable vintage LED globes
4 x 10m runs of festoon
Show Express lighting SW
4 x Chauvet DJ D-FI Hub Wireless DMX Transceiver
50 x clear umbrellas
1 x 650w projector
