Glow Parties, Neon Parties and Black Light Parties – An Event Planners Guide

At In Depth Events, we provide large scale glow party events for corporate clients, outdoor glow runs, college events and other large events with high numbers of attendees. We work with event planners and organizers from all over the country to provide events for thousands of people. This blog post is designed for this level of event.

If, however, you are putting on a glow party for a sweet sixteen birthday party, your personal Halloween party or a backyard party for your favorite 50 people – we respectfully suggest you go to Cool Glow and order for your specific needs. They have an amazing selection of glow stuff for smaller, private events.

So, what is a Glow Party, anyway?

Glow Parties, Neon Parties and Black Light Parties can be indoor black tie corporate parties or they can be nighttime outdoor festivals. But the main thing that unites them all is FUN! Whether it’s an outdoor fun run, a Neon New Year’s party or a college party, Glow Parties are a great way to have a memorable, exciting event. There are three different types of products that are used for all Glow Parties:

1 – UV lighting. Black Light lighting rentals, also called Ultra Violet lighting, are necessary for a glow party. Using UV lighting allows UV reactive clothing, paints or other items to glow. Although it’s nice to have specific items purchased for their ability to glow, you’ll be surprised at how much stuff you normally carry around, interact with or wear will glow under UV. There are even several bar items that will glow under black Light without special treatment! The major manufacturers of conventional UV lighting are Wildfire and Altman – and, of course, there are LED products from large scale to small flashlights that project UV.

2 – LED battery powered items. It’s hard to remember a time where LED lighting wasn’t in everything – from the flash on your phone, to lights in your car dash, to security lighting – and party items! You can buy battery operated LED’s in almost any shape or size. There are wigs with LED lighting woven in them, clothing, as well as buttons, teeth, ice cubes and even furniture. More formal corporate events can use LED bars, set pieces and DJ booths. Many events use LED Dance Floors as the centerpiece of the party. Since LEDs provide visible light, they are used in conjunction with UV lighting to create vibrant, saturated colors.

3 – Chemical glowing items. These are the glow sticks that you ‘break’ to activate the glowing liquid inside. These plastic tubes are filled with two non-toxic chemicals. What you bend the plastic, a thin tube of glass inside the plastic tube breaks, mixing two chemicals that provide glowing light for 2-4 hours. You can find these most often in necklaces, bracelets and, of course, glow sticks. They are great as fun, inexpensive giveaways at outdoor and indoor parties.

Production rentals for large scale Glow Party Events

As you may remember from your college dorm – Black Lights don’t produce visible light. As a result, you need a combination of UV lighting, LED lighting, and theatrical lighting rentals to provide the perfect glow party. Wall washes work well, but why stop there? Moving light rentals, LED Dance Floors, gobo projection – even special effects like confetti and cryo bring a Glow Party together for your attendees!

It’s incredibly important to find the right vendor for your Glow Party Events. Whether it’s a thousand people in a hotel ballroom, ten thousand college students in an auditorium or twenty thousand people at a 5K fun run, you need a vendor with specific experience in Glow Party events rentals. Not only will an experienced vendor have the rental UV lighting fixtures, special effects equipment and rigging equipment in their rental inventory, they will also have the knowledge and experience for rigging in indoor environments, working with fire marshals to provide engineered drawings and working with electrical power necessary for both indoor and outdoor Glow events.

The right vendor will be able to provide pictures of previous events – and pictures of more than one event! Check references of both clients AND vendors. Finally, get a Certificate of Insurance. A reputable vendor will have no problem providing a CoI to your organization and your selected venue.

The Shameless Sales Plug

The staff at In Depth Events has been involved with Glow Party events and Black Light production rentals for several years. We are one of a handful of companies that provide large scale UV for all types of events. You can visit parts of our site that deals with production rentals for Glow Parties – from Glow Party Experts to our All-Inclusive College Glow Parties. Make sure to visit our LED Dance Floor pages – once there, you can even get an instant rental quote!

Once you’ve checked us out, then make sure to Ask Us a Question about your upcoming event. Our experts will work within your budget and vision to make sure your Glow Party Events are incredible for your attendees. We look forward to hearing from you and working with you!

Is Your Nightlife Bad for Your Health? How to Sustainably Party Like a Rockstar

I’d like to consider myself your average, run of the mill thirty something. I wake up, go to work and come back home like any other red-blooded, taxpaying American. I am becoming increasingly aware, however, that most of what I consider to be standard weekend nightlife activity is not doing me or my health any favors. After years of cheese fries and buffalo wings being the only thing between my liver and an onslaught of an untold number of sugary, overly-caffeinated alcoholic drinks, part of me is turning to more sustainable behaviors as I quickly approach my 40s.

“We’re meeting on the baseball diamond at 5,” the instructions said. “Park behind Right Field and DON’T BE LATE!” I give myself a 15 minute cushion because, please… I’m a responsible adult. I am WAY beyond all the careless and haphazard decisions of my youth. Meanwhile, I follow my GPS directions to find a single file line of cars 2 miles long directly in front of the entrance. Ok, panic. Text the Event Leader to cover my tail, plead with the parking attendant not to charge me for parking… By this point, I already feel the bass rumble from our massive sound system as I duck under a broken fence post and arrive on the field just in the nick of time.

“Glad you decided to join us,” I hear behind a wall of Electronic Dance Music and cheers. The rest of the Event Team had arrived hours earlier to survey the site, unload the trucks, and setup over 5 tons of Professional Grade Sound and Stage equipment. “This is just the pre-party. We’re expecting over 11,000 runners, tonight.” Over 11,000?!? On a cold and windy February afternoon? Why had I never considered this?

And they came. Wave after wave of bright-eyed runners poured onto the baseball diamond with various bits of neon flair, a sea of candy-colored athletes waiting for their moment to attack the black light run course, stage by stage. My first task is to ride along with the Event Lead, fire up the electric generators, turn on the high power black light towers and crank the speakers with trance inducing dance music. “The runners are beginning to line up. Get to the Starting Line, ASAP!”

As the sea of glowing distance runners pour past me onto the course, I shamefully recount all my past weekend activities. It’s mostly sitting or standing in one place or another for hours, over paying for food and drinks while I complain about some silly first world inconvenience. I wonder if any of the runners are planning on stopping by Taco Bell after this…

As the runners finish the 5k black light run distance, they file back toward the stage on the baseball diamond. It’s dark now, and what was just bits of flair is now a glowing sea of bright neon colors. I’m having flashbacks to all the raves and outdoor tent parties I’ve been to, but this party has a different vibe. Take all the magic and power of the biggest warehouse parties you went to in college, remove the sketchy and dangerous elements, add a free range, grass fed kale shake or two – and what you’re left with is a pretty good description of a Black Light Run. Loud music, pretty people, glow sticks, but what do we have here? Clean bathrooms? A safe family environment? Concession stands? It IS a rave party… only grown up!

The DJ effortlessly mixes underground dubstep with Katy Perry to the delight of the crowd. A hype man on stage is throwing out handfuls of glow-in-the-dark party favors, as fast as he can. What happens next was MIND BLOWING.

After a knowing look to the DJ and the crowd, the hype man begins a count down from 10. It’s my first Black Light Run, so I look around as the crowd joins in. 3..2..1..

BOOM! The beat drops as clouds of neon colored powder (I later learned is treated corn starch) envelopes everything in sight. I can’t see the hand in front of my face but I can feel the crowd explode with energy as they disappear behind the cloak of colored fog. As the neon dust settles and the stage and lights slowly come back into focus, it dawns on me. THIS IS REALLY FUN! Looks like I’ll be spending more time with my new co-workers at In Depth Events!

Hopefully this blog has been informative for our event planner clients! For more information on In Depth Events and our event production capabilities, please Ask Us a Question today. We look forward to hearing from you and working with you on your event!

Confetti Cannon Rentals Vs Confetti Blower Rentals – An Event Planners Guide

Using Confetti Rentals at Live Events

Looking for a fun, exciting special effect for your live event? Use confetti – it’s a BLAST!

OK, so now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about how confetti rentals work for live events.

Most clients that rent a a confetti cannon are looking to either do a product reveal at a corporate event, introduce a headlining act at a concert or festival or provide a highlight moment at an awards presentation. Confetti is also used for longer lasting effects such as a prize giveaway at a store opening, a special effect during the length of an entire song at a concert or celebrating a win at a political event.

Before we go too deep into the differences between blowers and cannons, lets talk about the confetti (or media) itself. Traditional confetti is small pieces of tissue paper, but you can use all sorts of other media as well. Streamers are the second most common type of confetti media. However, we’ve have clients use glitter, feathers, and even custom cuts of paper like small stars, hearts or even company logos. Confetti media is limited only by your imagination!

Confetti Cannon rentals

Confetti Cannon on an outdoor rooftop structure

Most people use the term ‘confetti cannon’ as a general term for any device that spreads confetti, but it’s actually a very specific piece of production equipment. A confetti cannon uses a pressurized air tank that is a part of the unit itself. When the actuator is enabled, it releases the entire tank into the barrel (or, in the example above, the barrels) of the unit. The barrels are loaded with the client selected media, and can fire the media up to 100′ in the air. So, a confetti cannon is a one shot effect. Once the effect has been shot, the tank has to be re-pressurized and the barrels reloaded.

Confetti Blower rentals

Confetti Blower at an outdoor concert event

A confetti blower is different from a confetti cannon and is used for events that require a long lasting confetti effect. A confetti blower uses a CO2 tank that is separate from the unit itself. You can hook up one tank of CO2, or, you can hook up multiple tanks to each blower for really long effects. A blower also requires a technician to drop the selected confetti media into the hopper as it is discharging. When the actuator is enabled, the blower takes media from the hopper and projects it up to 100′ into the air. The primary difference between a confetti cannon and a confetti blower is that a blower can blow for as long as you have CO2 in the tank and a technician to feed the hopper. A single, small tank of CO2 can last for up to 45 seconds at full open, and can broadcast up to 10 pounds of confetti media per minute. With multiple tanks hooked up, you can easily broadcast media for as long as you need the effect and fill the air of the stadium, ballroom or outdoor venue with hundreds of pounds of confetti!

I hope this blog has been informative for our event planner clients! For more information on confetti rentals and whether a confetti cannon or confetti blower is right for your evnt, please Ask Us a Question today. We look forward to hearing from you and working with you on your event!

Live Event Marketing is Glowing in the Dark

How our Production Crew Turns a Live Event into a Glowing Marketing Extravaganza!

Understanding what events work and which never live up to the hype takes walking a very fine line. Now, more than ever, our live event marketing industry is looking for new, unique and innovative ways to get their clients and brands message across to event attendees. How does a marketing firm create this type of environment? They need help from innovative production companies! It’s important to choose a production company that has experience working with marketing firms. Only the two combined can create strategies that will incorporate the experiential components essential in making a truly successful (and memorable) live event.

A great example of our willingness to work with clients on experiential event trend is our Black Light 5K’s. At In Depth Events, we provide several clients with the live glow events elements necessary to cover crowds of up to 15,000 with high intensity UV in outdoor environments. These events are executed nationwide – offering a unique and memorable experience for all guests from all demographics. Event though my title is Live Event Market Manager, I was recently invited to help our crew build a Black Light 5K in Pomona and have a new found respect for the hardworking technicians that are my co-workers.

Hard at Work with the Black Light Production Crew

It starts with the team setting up the stage and trusses the night before in the center of the race track. It takes about 4 1/2 hours to complete the 20 foot x 20 foot stage and ADA ramp. It’s braced, locked in place and reinforced to provide stability for the DJs. And it’s built level on very un-level grassy ground. While the stage was being built, another crew built trusses at the start and finish lines of the race. This involved setting up pieces that were 20 ft. high with black lights being secured to all sides of the structure to create the glow effect the client required.

The next day the team returned at 8am to continue the build. They had their work cut out for them as they began creating peripheral staging to hold additional speakers to enhance and magnify the ultimate sound experience for the Black Light run participants. They set up 2 mini stages directly behind the main stage to literally pump up the volume. This turned out to be essential as the crowd far exceeded the expectations of the organizer!

Lighting and fog equipment for live glow events has to be secured to additional trusses that were placed on stage to help create the ultimate dance party experience which occurred directly after the run portion of the event. While half the team continued to finish setting up the sound system, lighting, and black lights for the main event area, the other half of the production crew had to set up even more trusses, lighting and audio at four additional locations throughout the run path.

Attendees began arriving at 4 pm and the gates were opened at 5 pm. The first wave crossed under the start line at 6:30 pm, and, after completing the race, went straight to the party area where the DJ’s were pumping music into the crowd. On entry to the party area, each attendee was given packets of UV reactive powder to throw in the air, on their friends or themselves! During the event, nearly 15,000 attendees showed up to Glow the night away under the high intensity, long throw black lights that were set up by our crew. These attendees came from every demographic and included every age group. However, the primary demographic seemed to be young couples with kids, definitely in the middle to upper income range and fitness minded. It was hard to see who was having more fun – the 30-something parents or the 12-17 year old kids at the stage barricades! Everyone was dancing the night away, glowing in UV reactive clothing and covered in UV reactive paint.

How to turn the Black Light Run into a promotional vehicle for my clients’ brands.

Since I was a guest on the production crew, I also was privileged enough to help with load out – and, I gotta tell you, it comes down much faster than it goes up! While I was working with the technicians, my mind turned to how I could use this event experience to promote my clients brands. Would live glow events work for promoting a sports brand? What about a non-profit? Can a glowing logo make a better impression than a print logo? Which of my clients would be interested in having their product presented at such a unique event in front of 15,000 consumers with disposable income?

The answer is, of course – all of them! But how best to utilize my new-found knowledge to help my clients? A sports drink client could certainly do giveaways. A sporting manufacturer could certainly give away UV reactive t-shirts. What if a client was willing to build an entire event to promote their brand? With a dedicated base of customers, a well-planned event could generate significant impressions for any of my clients. As I limped back to my car with the loaded trucks behind me, I was thankful that I do live event marketing for a living, and not production setup! I’ll be reaching out to my clients with my new ideas – and with the crew of In Depth Events in my back pocket, you’ll be sure to see my clients brands glowing soon!

I hope this blog has been informative for our event planner clients! For more information on In Depth Events and our event production capabilities, please Ask Us a Question today. We look forward to hearing from you and working with you on your event!

Category: Special FX