SHOWTIME

Lightime the Way to Theatrical Atmophere

        Overwhelming, high-energy lighting displays and low-key, subtle architectural lighting aren’t the only ways to stir emotion on-premise.
        Many of today’s masters of the nightlife game are inviting patrons into environs rooted more in theater than in boom. In our November 2005 issue, Vincent Conigliaro, president of Salvin Design, based in Kingston, N.Y., urged operators to get creative in lighting displays. Carrying out that notion now, he stresses the importance of creating theatrics in setting a venue apart from the competition.

The Next Act
    “There are a lot of changes going on,” Conigliaro says. “It seems like the big monster mega-clubs might be calming down a little bit. In the big bars, we’re seeing a lot of the corporate people –– those are the ones that are surviving, with the monster, 15,000-25,000-square-foot units.
    “And there, a lot of people are doing a lot of special effects and theater things that you never saw before in clubs. That, to me, is a very strange thing, to see theater in the nightclub industry,” he says.
    “I think they’re giving people something different. People get tired of the same menu; I can now change from hamburgers and go to chicken. I think the smart operators are giving the customer that change. Going to a club and getting blasted in the face with sound and lighting has been done.
    “I see the water curtains going on,” Conigliaro says, noting that Salvin is introducing water-themed effects at its booth at “The Show” this year. “We see that element coming in –– earth, wind and fire.” e4 in Scottsdale, Ariz. (see our January 2006 cover story for an in-depth profile), has captured these elements not only with its layout of four, individual rooms celebrating Earth, Wind, Fire and Water but also with its innovative uses of textures, colors, design angles and entertainment through the themed environments.
    “Look at Rain in the Desert,” Conigliaro says. “They’re one of the most successful clubs going in Vegas. It’s getting back, like Studio 54. But that was like going to a Broadway show. There were so many things happening to your right and your left –– things falling, things spinning. It was a real experience. It wasn’t just loud music and lights. It was a marriage of a lot of different effects.

Playing a Part
    The difference, Conigliaro believes, is in the patron’s role inside. “People just have more to do now than just sit there and listen and watch,” he says. “They can get involved and become one with the club.” As a case in point, Conigliaro cites the famed 1970s New York City club Area.
    “Area’s claim to fame was they changed their entire motif every four weeks,” he says. “You could walk in that front door and come back in four weeks; you’re in a different club completely –– and I’m talking bar changes, wall changes. It was the chameleon effect. They moved scenery. They moved the bar. Whenever I do a redesign of a club, the first thing I’ll do is try to move the front entrance of the club somewhere else, because for five or six years, people have been coming in that door, and they’re conditioned. Without a big increase in money, you just move the entrance.
    “Inside Area one night, they had a giant pinball machine come out of the ceiling, and there were these pads where you could actually hit the pads on the side of the pinball machine,” Conigliaro says. “And this giant ball would go up. You were interactive with this thing. What’s old is new.
    “It’s this philosophy that, when carried over into lighting, is captivating guests.” NCB