Roadskills – Hot Dub Wine Machine

Roadskills

Hot Dub Wine Machine

By Cat Strom.

Sydney’s Tom Lowndes, better known by his stage name Hot Tub Time Machine, has gained incredible traction over the last few years touring his time-travelling DJ sets around the world. The winery spinoff, Hot Dub Wine Machine, now in its second year, is the brainchild of management team Falcona, and with a bunch of huge names by their side, the party is proving hugely popular.

Hot Dub Time Machine’s concept is a great idea; he mixes tracks throughout the decades with their accompanying videos on the big screen, starting in the 1950s. Colourblind have been on board since Hot Dub’s first headline performances, so were a natural choice as lighting designers and production managers for the festival as it tours the country.

On the road are Claire Casement as Production Manager and Nicholas Beachen as Lighting Designer. Nick’s concept for the show is to keep the rig simple whilst being very effective for the touring LDs and himself.

“The brief from the act is simply to match or better the rig from the first time the festival ran in 2017,” added Nick. “Currently I am using the same rig with slightly more fixtures in some areas. The biggest addition being custom RGBW letters spelling ‘Wine Machine’, a simple idea but very effective branding when programmed into the show.”

Photo: Brayden Smith

Nick’s admits that creating a rig that is scalable between shows is a challenge. They use a different stage for each show on the tour, the smallest being eight meters wide and the largest 22 metres wide between legs, which is quite a difference.

Purposely keeping the stage setup and trussing simple helps with scaling between cities so there are three overhead lighting trusses plus an upstage and downstage row. Each truss simply has six profiles, six wash lights, six beams, six strobes and six blinders.

“Although I do have preferred fixtures I will use anything that matches a type,” commented Nick. “I also place dedicated key lights on the front, upstage floor, and downstage sides for ease of use during the show. Hot Dub remains very well-lit throughout the entire show.”

Photo: Brayden Smith

Mediatec supplied the Roe Linx18 for the main upstage wall with Nick describing it as a great quality mesh product that goes together very quickly with minimal weight. There are also two IMAG screens of Mediatec X7. Although it’s a basic set up, it really looks big and bold and meets the artists’ requirements. Hot Dub also has a custom DJ table with Roe Linx7 on the front which they’ve been using for a few years now. According to Nick, it’s held up to the harsh treatment on tour.

Content for the Hot Dub show is made and controlled by Tom Lowndes himself as part of his show. The rest of the content for the festival came from Colourblind’s Green Hippo Hippotizer V4 controlled on MA2. Some artists provided media and logos and Colourblind had some logos and emergency slides produced for the show. However, it’s mostly just stock background and effects for the day running on Hippo, controlled by the festival console.

Photo: Pat Stevenson

Control setup is two grandMA2 with an MA2 network at FOH with one NPU, controlling the rig via ArtNet nodes on stage, with two Hippotizer V4 Portamus are controlled via ArtNet.“However, my favourite part of the control set up is the MA2 console shades we purchased at LDI last year!” added Nick.

There was evidence of a great day had by all as the masses exited through a sea of discarded wine bottles, cans, food containers and picnic rugs, while Hot Dub Time Machine dropped his final track with fireworks lighting up the background and confetti floating everywhere.

If the increased scale of this year’s event is anything to go by, this is probably not the last we’ll see of Wine Machine.

This article first appeared in the print edition of CX Magazine April 2018, pp.40-41. CX Magazine is Australia and New Zealand’s only publication dedicated to entertainment technology news and issues. Read all editions for free or search our archive www.cxnetwork.com.au

Main photo: Brayden Smith. All text and photos © CX Media