Brown Note Productions, Inc. Invests in Elation IP-Rated Lighting

Brown Note Productions, Inc., a full-service production company based in Thornton, Colorado, has purchased a large fleet of Elation Professional IP-rated outdoor lighting fixtures and immediately had the gear out on a fall run of music festivals.

"We chose to go with IP rated fixtures to be part of the solution for our industry," states Ryan Knutson, president of Brown Note Productions, Inc. "With the changing climate and the desire to be outdoors listening and seeing your favorite performers, the stakes in the game have changed. The visual designs now call for non-traditional stage layouts to complement the artists' performances. These visual platforms require lighting and other production technology to be directly exposed to the elements."

Knutson says that Brown Note's historical approach was to bag fixtures with bulky, expensive weather domes, but that was not an optimal solution. "With the shrinking labor budgets and build times on these shows, adding in extra gear means more time, more trucks, more crew, more everything. We know that this is not sustainable."

Brown Note specializes in full-service production for concerts, tours, music festivals, and special events, but even on traditional stages like mobile or truss structures, Knutson says you can never 100% cover the technology. "We have had weather at several festivals in the past ten years that has destroyed our equipment and the look of the show because you cannot provide enough spares to turn over entire trusses or sections of the systems. With all of this and the industry saying 'the show must go on,' now with our IP-rated Elation gear, we have a real solution for our clients."

Knutson notes that it is not only BNP clients who benefit but their hard-working crew as well. "I have personally watched our teams stay on site for many wasted hours waiting to bag lighting systems and to weather protect overnight," he says. "This becomes a much shorter process for them with the IP products. These events are long days, and I want nothing more than for our teams to get the rest they deserve. This is very important to me and the culture at BNP. In the end, we are a solutions company, and this is our solution for lighting in the ever-changing event landscape."

Brown Note's acquisition includes Elation's 50,000-lumen Proteus Maximus, a full featured LED profile framing fixture and the brightest IP65 moving head ever created; Proteus Rayzor 760, a compact IP65-rated LED wash luminaire with SparkLED background illumination system; Protron Eclypse hybrid LED luminaires; and variable white DTW Blinder 700 IP LED blinders. "With this combo of lights, we can do most events with an all IP-rated system, giving our clients the full show rain or shine!" Knutson says.

When looking at the best technology for BNP's clients, the company looked at more than IP rating and considered all of the 750W and above LED engines. "We didn't want these lights to just be an outdoor thing for us," Knutson says. "We wanted a feature-rich, high-quality light that we could spec for any indoor event. This meant we were looking for features first, diving deep into the things that are important to our clients."

He adds that when looking at hybrid/framing, spot/wash LED fixtures in particular, the most important feature to them was color temperature. "The biggest problem with LED is the color mixing red. Every manufacturer has a slightly different take or importance level meter on this," he says. "For us at BNP, flexibility of color is very important for the different types of events we do. The Proteus Maximus fixture fit right in the middle of our acceptable range and is quite good in a color mix red!"

Brown Note immediately sent the new IP-rated lights out on a three-week festival run in Louisville, Kentucky, providing non-stop lighting on three Danny Wimmer Presents festivals, Hometown Rising, and Bourbon and Beyond, as well as Louder than Life, the biggest rock festival in the US in 2019. More on those soon!