Not a disco ball, but a disco...disc?

August 4, 2010 9:26 PM

What is the name of the light that comes in as the background around 1:05 of this video? Bonus points for other wacky disco lights you can tell me about.
posted by mike_bling to Technology (5 answers total)

Not a light in the traditional sense (meaning, it's not like a disco ball or strobe light). It looks like a kaleidoscope of sorts that was laid in behind them (kind of like how they do green screen stuff). This is sad because I now want to exist in a world where that kind of light exists.
posted by AlisonM at 9:35 PM on August 4, 2010

It's a Moiré pattern created by a rotating disk.
posted by drdanger at 10:31 PM on August 4, 2010

it's a transparency with black spokes and a rotating disk behind it with color bars radiating from the center, and i think the color bars somewhere/how between the center and edge. there are also black lines between the radiating color bars. the singers were probably chromakeyed over it.
posted by rhizome at 12:17 AM on August 5, 2010

If you want to see examples of disco lighting, American DJ has little sample videos on each of their product pages. Lighting has come a long way in the 30 years since disco died. Thanks to LEDs, computer controls, and sound activation, modern dance lighting is pretty awesome. Here's a page with their LED stuff on it.
posted by cosmicbandito at 6:05 AM on August 5, 2010

Chauvet is another manufacturer. I used to rent out their stuff, and it was fairly decent. American DJ would likely be a tad cheaper.
posted by Wulfhere at 11:15 AM on August 5, 2010