Summer Party Lights

While I appreciate Scotto’s enthusiasm, I am afraid his suggestions will fall a bit short of the mark.

He IS right in that not having walls (or a ceiling for that matter) and not being able to use smoke/haze (haze always a big favorite imho) is a definite disadvantage. It also means that your laser are pretty much useless unless you happen to have a foggy night.

Secondly, the lights he is suggesting, like the ADJ Micro Phase, are ok for a house party in a small room with 20 people, but will be absolutely lost outdoors. This particular light features a 3W LED 3-in1 source (RGB), meaning it can effectively output 1W in each of those colors. All three colors on full means white (not very exciting) is the only color to utilize the full 3W. Now while LED does give you much more light per Watt, it still only equals a 30W regular lightbulb at full white. Not something that will make you happy, especially outdoors. Same goes for the strobes. You will see them strobe, but you won’t have the actual strobe effect. You’d need a couple of 500/1000W xenon strobes to make that happen outdoors in the woods.

You mentioned you are in the woods, reflected lights is much more prominent than direct light. So, an option would be to get (battery powered if you can find them), LED lights (15-25W minimum) and use them as uplights at the foot of some trees, set them to auto program or sound response or just have them run a slow color changing chase. This will create ambience without actually lighting up the place. Another thing to get (rent) is some moving heads. LED ones are getting pretty powerful and lightweight/small size. They will send pretty strong beams with more effect than the lasers I think.

Finally just regular 2x t-bar LED PAR lights on stands (high stands 3m or higher) aimed down on the dance area. This will light the dancers and the “dancefloor”. Most LED PARs have strobe function nowadays, so you can use them as strobes. Be sure you get some of the latest versions, not the ones were you can see the individual LEDs. The new ones have power of 150W LED or more. That might be overkill, but I’d look for 35W or more per PAR.

So, unless you are willing to go all out (and spend a fortune) to bring a real big light show, that is what I would rent/bring. Some self-supporting uplights (who needs the cabling work), two stands with 4-bars with LED Pars and two moving heads, preferable mounted in such a way that you can have those aiming either at the surrounding trees or onto the people dancing. It’s always a good idea to ask the rental people for some advice to. Word of warning (we are all like kids in a candy store when we visit a rental place after all): set a hard budget before going in there and make it happen within your budget. It’s really easy to overspend.

Hope that helps.

@Scotto: no disrespect, bro!

No offense taken. The setup I recommended was based on uncertain conditions, a low budget and the assumption that most of it will never be used again.

I also assumed that since OP said party rather than show that it would be a scattered crowd rather than a large mob and central stage. Sometimes you have house parties that are scattered across multiple rooms or in a very large area. Rather than trying to fill everywhere with an overwhelming display I would rather have localized effects scattered around the room(s). In that circumstances low powered lights can work by creating focal points for crowds to gather. Since the people are closer you don’t need as much power out of the lights.

A microphase and a few cheap strobes can work if you’re only trying to light up the area near the DJ. The microphase to light up the ground and create texture and the strobes to silhouette and reflect light off the DJ rather than trying to strobe the crowd.

I’ve using one of those cheap disco bulbs in a paper lantern, it creates a really interesting ambiance lighting. The lantern I had was in a wood shell with laser cut patterns so the cutouts worked like gobos.