Ms Collins is the new inhabitant of the grand sandstone building on the corner of Melbourne’s Collins and Market streets, which in its previous incarnation had been home to Silk Road.
The latest venture for established hospitality group Roar Projects, which also owns Alumbra in the Docklands, Ms Collins includes seven bars all of varying sizes and ambience is capable of holding 800 patrons. It’s a vast black, multi-level structure daubed with a riot of pink and white paint and neon lighting, with intimate spaces tucked in every corner.
Designed by Blackmilk Interiors and inspired by French socialite ‘Ms Collins’, the elaborate venue evokes glamour and sexiness with the use of bold, opulent colours and a luminous material palette featuring high tech fabrics that are capable of changing colour with light.
As well as thought provoking signage and daring use of colour, the venue features a suspended DJ stage that hovers above the central island bar. Pivotal to the design is the translucent central bar, framed with black steel and glass balustrades.
Audio and Lighting Services were tasked to design, supply and install the lighting and audio requirements of the venue and immediately turned to their trusted supplier Show Technology to provide a complete package.
Louie Constantinou, director of Audio and Lighting Services, worked closely with the client and the architects particularly as the venue was heritage listed restricting the placement of lighting.
The main entrance is high and features a large white horse hanging upside down. This is lit up at night by three Pro Shop LED Quad Bars with the colourful display acting as a beacon to passing pedestrians and traffic. An ELC DMX Scene player controller looks after this area.
For the main room and the mezzanine floor, Louie took the opportunity to use some of Martin’s RUSH fixtures with sixteen RUSH MH3 beam lights and six RUSH MH1 profile lights. Added to that were six MAC Auras.
“The venue trades three nights per week in nightclub mode so we needed a product that would last and reliability was a big factor when choosing the fixtures,” commented Louie. “The beams from the RUSH MH3 are fantastic – bright and quick. The MAC Auras were chosen to provide colour wash in the room but as they can zoom we also use them to highlight things such as dancers. They’ve been performing great.”
Adam Leelasorn is the inhouse technician at Ms Collins and he has been blown away by the Martin RUSH fixtures.
“The MH3’s are brilliant, such a strong beam … I love them!” he said. “It’s really interesting using them to make shapes and patterns in the air, they’re wonderfully powerful and pretty quick too. They do most of the work through the void in the main bar area. The MH1 profile lights are pretty cool too especially the gobo selection in the gobo wheel.
“The MAC Auras are great for lighting the room when it trades as just a bar rather than a nightclub. However, when the room is in nightclub mode I have a lot of fun with the Auras going from a sharp beam out to a wider focus using different colours.”
As Louie already has a splendidly performing Martin M1 console in sister venue Alumbra, he decided to stick with the same platform.
“It’s a great console, never misses a beat and is easy to use,” he added. ““The M1 is the complete package: simple to learn, I like the touchscreen and the colour picker window for easy colour selection is great too. We also added a Martin Ether 2DMX8 for Artnet to DMX conversion.”
In the near future the venue plans to install LED screens and in preparation, Louie has supplied them with a coolux Pandoras Box Media Server to play video content on the LED Screen.
The Ballroom area of the venue has six RUSH MH2 wash lights which are, according to Louie, compact yet powerful, fast and agile. Their unique wash beam effects are possible with auto trig shows and music trig sound activation.
“Unfortunately the Ballroom often runs with a separate DJ and I have to leave the MH2’s with a few programmed looks,” lamented Adam. “I’m very tempted to move them into the main room so I can get my hands on them as they’re a great fixture!”
Ninety-six of the new Elation Pixel Bar 40 Modular Linear RGB Pixel Control LED Strips are on the roof with another coolux Pandoras Box Media Server supplied, this time for pixel mapping the LED strips. The Pixel Bars are great for displaying imagery or can be used as a wash luminaire for floodlighting surfaces and stages. They are an exciting addition to the venue and there energetic displays have become quite a talking point.
“They really look beautiful and are one of the best looking features of the venue,” remarked Adam.
All five bars in the venue are internally lit up with Pro Shop RGB HD LED Tape with each controlled via their own ELC DMX Scene player.
“This is really useful for when corporate clients hire the venue and so they can light up the bar in the appropriate corporate colour,” said Louie. “The Pro Shop RGB LED Tape is a simple way to provide a colour changing touch to a bar creating a bright and saturated glow. The output is even and vibrant and the colours achievable are endless.”
The Pro Shop RGB HD LED Tape is so effective Adam has to turn down the brightness.
“If I had them turned up to 100% I could pretty much light the entire venue with them,” he laughed. “I have to turn them down quite a bit for the club mode but during the day trade I run them quite bright.”
Atmosphere throughout the venue is supplied by Martin Jem Compact Hazer Pro machines.
Photos: Anthony Licuria and Peter Tarasik
