The Bottom End is a new kind of hybrid venue: the love-child of a fair-dinkum pub and a hedonistic party palace with an all-night pseudo-US diner thrown in for good measure, The Bottom End is helmed by Michael Delany-Korabelnikova, the man behind Honkytonks, Third Class and Sorry Grandma!
Recently instrumental in helping create the key venues of Sydney’s “pub revolution”: The Flinders, The Norfolk, The Carrington and The Abercrombie, Michael is bringing many far-flung elements together in this distinctly Melbourne venue.
Spread over three levels, the venue was once a massive wool store and its hulking timbers and brickwork are hugely atmospheric. The groundfloor bar has been tricked up by the technicolour fairies into what can only be described as a “Robin Hood Dive Bar” with booths and nooks galore, whilst the first floor hosts Survivor! a massive giant rave party of stupendous quality and excitement. Lurking above Survivor! on the top level of the venue is Poof Doof, a gay club that is the duck’s nuts – a fabulous house music club for brothers of all walks of life.
The first floor has had a complete technical overhaul with Ambient Technology supplying new audio, lighting and vision which was then installed by Disco Doctors. Crucial to the design was a MOTN 12 Led screen which stretches the full width of the venue behind the DJ becoming a key focus of the venue’s design.
The MOTN range of LED Video panels is a versatile, transparent and lightweight video display system that comes in three, useful pixel pitch sizes to suit any almost any budget or application. Sharing the same base chassis construction the 12.5mm, 15mmm and 20mm panels are inter changeable to ensure the highest level of flexibility and creativity.
“The screen went up very easily, its connections and everything was fantastic,” commented Chris McDowall, managing director of Disco Doctors. “It was a breeze, a simple step by step process. The power of the signal was fantastic. It went up first day with no de-bugging, it was all perfect!”
“With the control side – the backup given by Paul and Simon from Show Technology was amazing. The way that they set it up before it actually came to the venue made it a breeze. I cannot rate it high enough.”
M-PC from Martin (PC-based lighting control software) was used to control both the lighting rig and the coolux Media system. DMX output is achieved from an Ether2DMX node from Martin, and this unlocks 8 universe of control with the M-PC.
“We have set this up on a touch screen computer,” explained Show Technology’s Simon Barrett. “We have programmed a number of ‘buttons’ that allows quick and easy control of some pre-programmed lighting effects.
Video control is done through coolux Pandora’s Player. Coolux manages all the content and does all the scaling for the screen.
Forty-nine of the famous Pro Shop LED DMX Tubes are installed through the roof running back to a Martin splitter which was then running MPC. In house gear installed onto MPC as well.
“We’ve been installing Pro Shop LED DMX Tubes into venues for the past five years – they really are a dime a dozen,” said Chris. “As usual, they’ve gone into this install with a 100% success rate – very easy and no headaches.”
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