Ozzy New Years Eve
Ozzy Osbourne
NYE Spectacular
ER Productions delivered a full mix of exciting SFX and Lasers for Ozzy Osbourne, at Ozzfest, the sell-out New Year Eve event at the LA Forum.
Ozzfest, the annual hard rock and heavy metal music event, occurred for the first time, since its 1996 debut, to celebrate New Year's Eve on 31 December 2018. ER Productions were thrilled to be invited to provide stage effects for this special show. The day-into-night event featured 10 hours of live music that culminated with a 90-minute career-spanning set from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy® Award-winning singer, songwriter and festival namesake Ozzy Osbourne.

ER Productions has enjoyed working with the Prince of Darkness, and his Production Manager, Andy “O” Omilianowski, a good deal in the past and were delighted to be commissioned as the official supplier of lasers and special effects for Ozzy’s World Tour, which continues into 2019. ER’s co-founder, Ryan Hagan and SFX Project Manager, George Baker, once again, liaised with creatives, Lighting Director, Michael Keller and Lighting Designer, Terry Cook, who designed the captivating experience.

ER was pleased to debut their brand new Co2-free confetti blower, Typhoon, at the show. 25 of the units were positioned on a u-shaped truss, over the audience, which delivered a 200kg hit of white confetti, creating a snow blizzard effect during carefully-planned cues for tracks Mr Crowley and Mama. Typhoon works via a set of powerful but silent fans, which push confetti out and a controllable hopper evenly distributes it.

Baker, commented, “Ozzy’s show was the perfect opportunity to showcase the Typhoons for the first time. Typhoon has been designed to deliver an evenly spread confetti blast, which worked really well to create Terry’s vision of a wintery snowfall effect.”
Cook responded with, “The snow effect was spectacular and looked truly special. I was really surprised at how quick the system came together in LA.
We didn’t have long and George and the ER team worked really hard to deliver what was required.”
The audience truss also held 24 PsychoJet 2s, including 2 custom built Co2 platforms to hold 24 cryo bottles, which were tilted to give effective coverage over the entire audience area. The truss also housed over 500 red and black Ozzy branded balloons. The balloon drop, triggered by our Kabuki System, allowed the balloons to completely cover the crowd below, during Paranoid.

ER’s team arranged 24 Stadium Shot 2s and 10 Stadium Blasters round the first level audience ring, and 4 Stadium Shot Extremes, and 4 Stadium Blasters in the pit, so during Paranoid and the midnight sequence, the 16,000 audience members were surrounded by the hits of Ozzy branded confetti and streamers.

ER’s pyrotechnics came into play for the finale, midnight sequence, with 12 positions of pyro in total. 24 Red MultiShot Tracer Comets, 20 Orange Airbursts and 36 Red, White and Gold Flitter Mines were let off from the stage at angles, providing depth to the look. Alongside the SFX, 12 Phaenon 30000 RGBY lasers, lit up the stage with some beautiful choreography, whilst 8 Viper deLuxe and 4 Unique Hazers provided the atmospherics.

ER would like to thank Terry Cook, Michael Keller and Ozzy’s entire team for inviting us to help deliver this phenomenal show, and also to the ER crew who made it possible, Alex Oita, Laser Technician, George Baker, SFX Project Manager, and Marco Sanchez, Joe Jackson, Dan Pecora, Rebecca Prough and Chris Cerione.
For more information about the products used in this show, or to make a general enquiry, please contact us.
Photo credit: Andrena Photography