The venue location for the Mountain Jam festival is simply breathtaking. The Hunter Mountain resort provides a beautiful backdrop and 360 view, and overlooks Dolans Lake. Venues like this are perfect for music festivals, and the incredible views become part of the entire festival experience. Mountain Jam is now in its 11th year, and continues to feature big name talent, this year including Beck, Wilco, Gov’t Mule, The Avett Brothers and many more. Mountain Productions provided staging and additional equipment for the weekend festival for the third year in a row.
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[STAGING SPOTLIGHT] The SL-100 Mobile Stage
Our motto is “No job is too big or too small”—here’s a mobile stage that caters towards the smaller scale events and festivals: the SL-100. Our staging spotlight this week is all about making the most out of the limited space you have available. Mobile stages are perfect for time-sensitive events with limited labor, and the SL-100 is the ideal mobile unit when space is added to the equation.
The SL-100 is our smallest mobile stage, with a footprint of 24’ x 20’. Events taking place on the SL-100 don’t typically require a lot of production gear, so the rigging capacity of 6,500 lbs is capable of handling these events with ease.
Mobile Stage Softgood Spec Sheets
Here’s some quick guides for your art department. These printouts are great references of the recommended softgood banner sizes for each of our mobile stages. Use this when you’re setting up your design files to make sure your banners fit appropriately. Keeping your files accurate and to the right measurements and scale helps speed up the printing process immensely. (Click here to read additional tips for custom softgood printing.)
Enjoy!
[FEATURED PRODUCTS] CM Chain Hoist Replacement Parts
It’s already the end of May, and your CM hoists have already hit the road for shows in your summer season schedule. It’s important to maintain and repair any hoists returning from a show so that the next event runs just as smoothly. At Mountain Productions, our motor shop is busy year round performing hoist servicing, repairs, and more, and our in-house inventory of genuine CM replacement parts is extremely diverse.
One of the goals for our e-commerce website was to provide an easy way to quickly find and order CM replacement hoist parts. We’ve separated, organized, photographed, and documented every component of a Classic Lodestar, Next-Gen Lodestar, and Prostar (including both Small and Large Frame models). You won’t find a more comprehensive and detailed inventory of CM replacement hoist parts anywhere on the web.
[Q+A] Insight from the Experts – Chris Shaffer and LiftAll
We can’t do our jobs without the help of safe lifting equipment. Entertainment production workers are no strangers to roundslings and chain hoists—both critical to rigging and material handling. We deal with this gear every day, and only trust the safest, highest quality sling products. Mountain Productions proudly uses and distributes LiftAll® roundslings. LiftAll manufactures a wide variety of web, mesh, chain and wire rope slings along with lifting devices, straps, sling protection and more. Chris Shaffer, District Sales Manager for LiftAll, visits Mountain Productions a few times a year to perform training sessions and present at our annual CM Hoist School. We spoke to him recently for a Q+A article discussing LiftAll and how they have become a valuable asset to the industrial and entertainment markets.
[STAGING SPOTLIGHT] The Mountain Truss System
It’s one of the premiere staging systems in entertainment today, and we proudly offer it as our strongest, biggest, and most capable system in our fleet. This week’s Staging Spotlight is all about the Mountain Truss System. The Mountain Truss is our most recent stage system, adding rigging capacity and features beyond our scaffold and truss tower systems. Countless events trust in the Mountain Truss System and its strength each year, ranging from huge multi-day music festivals, to state fairs and high-profile televised events.
This structure consists of an 8 or 4 tower design (depending on what size stage you require) and features a completely redesigned roof grid that can hold nearly any size show. 5 cross stage truss spans, a 20’ cantilever and both sound bays are each able to hold 50,000 lbs. The video wings accommodate up to 25,000 lbs each.
[EVENT RECAP] Rutgers University 2016 Commencement
This year, Rutgers University celebrated the graduation of 11,000 students with 40,000 faculty, staff, and attendees packing the High Point Solutions Stadium. President Obama was the honorary speaker of the 2016 ceremony, and delivered a memorable speech to the graduating class. (Watch President Obama’s full speech here) Mountain Productions proudly provided staging, flooring, and additional structures for the event. This is the sixth year in a row Mountain has been involved with Rutgers’ commencement ceremony.
Introducing Product Bundles at Mountain Productions Rigging Shop
We’ve just made it even easier to instantly upgrade the essential safety items and tools every rigger, climber, and production worker should have on-site. We’re excited to introduce the addition of product bundles on Mountain Productions Rigging Shop! These bundles have been specially assembled to include the most relevant and reliable gear that is accessible to anyone, regardless of budget. As a bonus value, each of our product bundles includes a FREE Mountain Productions t-shirt and duffel bag! Take a look at our 4 featured product bundles:
[EVENT RECAP] Wake Forest 2016 Commencement
Our next commencement event recap is from Wake Forest, where Mountain Productions provided staging services for the second year in a row. Wake Forest’s commencement ceremonies take place outdoors in front of the beautiful Wake Chapel building. This scenic backdrop sets the mood for the esteemed event, and becomes a part of the entire event aesthetic.
Mountain Productions’ built the main stage area with two flanking side stages. Each stage featured a Thomas Truss roof grid, and the center main stage roof came to a central peak.
How to Attract More Shows and the Audiences that Follow with an Arena Reduction System
Venue installation systems are designed to help optimize your venue and make the most out of your arena in terms of ticket sales, labor costs, tours, shows and more. One of the install services Mountain Productions can provide is arena reduction. Using a Mountain Productions’ Arena Reduction System can greatly bring down maintenance and labor costs while increasing your ticket sales and variety of shows your venue can fill.
Arena reduction systems are modular solutions involving electric chain hoists, truss and curtains. A reduction system will reduce the size of your venue space, allowing you to bring in smaller scale shows that might skip over your large seating arena space.