National Book Festival Power and Rigging Day
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS, TIPS & TRICKS
Today we started both signage rigging and power for the 2011 National Book Festival. The day started with rain that moved through, but luckily didn t slow the crews down too much.
As you can see from the photos, this is where we start to see the signage and branding come to life. We will continue the power and AC basics as well as the signage throughout the week.
Multi Axis Camera Jib
EVERYTHING ELSE, TIPS & TRICKS
So it may be a foregone conclusion, but it seems that some of the event work we do at Decibel does follow us home. Check out the multi-axis camera jib after the jump
As you can see below, Asher developed his own hybrid of the typical camera jib by including a bucket for the mini-fig camera operator using a fire truck ladder, camera, and custom stage.
Royal Wedding
EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS, TIPS & TRICKS
There are thousands of pieces that go into an event this size, and from the coverage, it certainly looked as if they nailed them all. Instead of focusing on the overall event, there was one piece that really did stand out in my mind, the floral, and more specifically, the trees inside the Abbey.
According to Professional Florist, Shane Connolly designed the arrangements from flowers to the trees throughout Westminster Abbey. Instead of a lavish design with out-of season arrangements, the flowers were all seasonal and British.
The article from Professional Florist below gives the detail.
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, eschewed ostentatious out-of-season flowers in favour of a simple bouquet made mainly of lily of the valley for her wedding to Prince William.
The seasonal British flowers, designed by florist Shane Connolly, were a nod to the less than lavish wedding that the couple said they hoped to plan. Although a reported 50,000 spent decorating Westminster Abbey with field maple and hornbeam trees suggested the couple didn t have things all their own way.
All the trees and flowers were selected by the Middletons and arranged by Shane Connolly s team. Each choice came with a reference to the language of flowers. Lily of the valley is associated with trustworthyness. Maple suggests humility and hornbeams are linked to resilience.
Shane Connolly s web site bears the By Royal Appointment to HRH The Prince of Wales crest, and promotes the florist as constantly striving to delight its clients.
Physiological Branding
TIPS & TRICKS
In the event world, experience is King. Over the last few years there has been a concentrated focus in the industry to move toward a full brand experience, rather than simply hosting a event or gathering for a target audience. Full immersion, sensory activation and user experience are considered when planning and executing events.
With that in mind, this is a fantastic behind the scenes look at a BMW advertisement and screening. Here, they are taking an advertisement and have gone beyond the experiential aspect. They have included a physiological effect called an afterimage. Towards the end of the ad, they flash a projection of the letters BMW and ask the audience to close their eyes. The image will float in front of you when you close your eyes.
Look for more and more companies and clients moving toward tactics that elicit a physiological response. And look for some to begin to push the line. In reading the comments for the video and other blogs, some people already think this goes too far for an advertisement. I personally can t wait to see where this trend goes.
How it s Done: Afterimages
In the video above they don t include the flash, so I have included a quick example below from a University of Toledo Web site. Stare at the dot over the eye in AFTERiMAGE in the diagram below for 10-20 seconds. Then shift your vision over to the black dot on the plain gray part of the diagram. You should see a negative version of the square and word. It doesn t show up instantaneously, but emerges after a second or so. More detail on this and other examples can be found here.
How to Watch a DVD in the Front Lounge
TIPS & TRICKS
This great insight to life on the road comes from our friends at This Gig Sucks. It is a very accurate description of every mobile coach I have ever been on.
How to watch a DVD in the front Lounge:
- Rummage through sofa cushions for all 4 remotes.
- Complain there is no satellite signal.
- Ask driver to pull bus forward 5 feet.
- Ask driver to release hold button for Dish roaming.
- Discuss whether signal is blocked by building next to the bus. Hint aloud that other bus parking might be available.
- Realize the Dish is not turned on. Turn it on.
- Do you need the Dish on to watch a DVD? Discuss.
- Only after disk owner gives a brief story about the disks provenance and expresses incredulity that everyone present hasn t already seen this great movie which the owner has seen many times but likes so much he doesn t mind watching again, insert disk into DVD.
- Randomly punch through input options on the receiver. Hearing nothing, turn volume up to 75.
- Resume hitting buttons until DVD soundtrack is heard without picture, extremely loudly. Adjust volume quickly, while others complain bitterly about your stupidity.
- Try to change TV channel with remote that is NOT PROGRAMMED FOR THIS FEATURE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PROGRAM THIS FEATURE NOW? [escape]. Search for another remote.
- Get sidetracked when you stumble into the color/brightness/hue/contrast menu, and since you are there anyway, make a few totally unnecessary changes in picture quality.
- Realize you are hearing the Wii menu music, not the DVD. Resume punching through receiver options, only faster this time.
- Have any other crew guy shoulder you aside and punch through the exact same buttons hoping for a different result, while all other lounge occupants have a lively discussion about possible problems and shout redundant and unhelpful suggestions at the guy currently messing with receiver.
- Have Driver explain receiver must be set to AUX 2, TV to channel 53 using the black remote, and speakers to B , with SAT/CBL button out, and Dish off. Also, do not use the microwave with the DVD player on.
- Driver remembers that front lounge DVD player has no audio output, but the one in back works, and he has been meaning to fix that on the next day off
- a) Give up in disgust. Resume watching the Weather Channel. b) Unless you have been drinking. In that case, at least two people begin removing electronic components from media center for rewiring. Everyone else go to back lounge to watch Weather Channel or the DVD, because no one will be watching, or listening, to anything at all in the front lounge until after the next day off.
How to get an Audience Response System for your Next Event
TIPS & TRICKS
Audience Response Systems (ARS) have been around for a very long time, but it s only recently that I ve started seeing them treated as must-haves by event industry writers. In this post, we introduce you to a few companies that can get ARS set up at your event.
What is an ARS, exactly?
Audience Response Systems allow you to gather live data from your audience, such as opinion polling during a speech or class lecture, for example. The benefits are obvious: increase audience engagement while collecting information, and help your audience feel more connected to the data that they present. Here are a couple of ARS Providers:
Poll Everywhere
Introducing Poll Everywhere from Poll Everywhere on Vimeo.
Some ARS systems actually involve equipment, but Poll Anywhere allows attendees to use Twitter or their mobile devices to respond to presenter questions. The results can be seen live online, or they can be piped directly into a powerpoint presentation. The cool thing about Poll Everywhere is that they allow for open-ended questions. You can ask the audience, for example, What are you doing this afternoon? and the text-messaged answers get posted to an answer board that either just the presenter can see, or everyone can see. Great stuff!
Keepad
Keepad also offers app-based ARS systems that send data to Powerpoint, but they also rent out dedicated hardware keypads for voting, and a little gadget for receiving votes as well. If you re not confident in the wifi or technology available at your venue, or otherwise aren t confident that your audience will have the capacity to vote, getting dedicated equipment may be the way to go.
5 Fancy-Pants Ways to Serve Plain ol Water
TIPS & TRICKS
I don t know what it is about serving specialty water, but people love it: there s something about it that feels decadent. And yet there s really nothing so easy as tossing a handful of fruits or foliage into a pitcher. We ve all got the lemon gig down, but it doesn t cost much to kick it up a notch. Even better? You can match your water to your color palette.
Lavender
Visually arresting and strongly fragrant, tossing a few sprigs of lavender into your water pitchers creates a rural, musky floral scent. Lavender oil is strong, so you won t need much maybe 2 sprigs per pitcher. The water and lavender should soak together for a few minutes prior to serving, so it s good to have multiple pitchers on rotation. (Pro tip: Lavender also does wonders in a pitcher of lemonade).
Cucumber
We couldn t get enough of our first try of cucumber water. Cucumber is famously hydrating, and when we toss it in a pitcher and let it soak, the effect was deeply thirst-quenching: a wonderful mixture of freshness and savory. This one is probably best served in summer, and, unlike lavender water, feels a bit more gender-neutral.
Mint
Too early for a tipple? Let plain ol water stand in for morning mojitos. Muddle up at least 10 sprigs of mint before soaking them in your pitcher.
Goji Berries
Another eye-catcher, toss a handful of brilliant red goji berries into a pitcher of water or at the bottom of each guest s water glass. When the glass is full, the delicate berries slowly float and sink from the top of the glass to the bottom. As they soak, they fatten slightly and a acquire a soft raisin-like consistency. Goji berries are a visual addition only: they impart almost no flavor to the water at all. Bonus: anti-oxidants!
Ginger
Ginger water is excellent in both cold and warm weather, and pairs well with Asian-inspired cuisine. Peel your ginger first, then cut into spears or rounds. Half a large root will flavor a pitcher.
4 Great Mobile-Ready Single Page Event Website Templates
LIVE EVENTS
There are a billion-zillion reasons you might be asked to handle the website end of your event, despite not being in the tech business: the client s web designer is unavailable, and the site needs to go online pronto; the client doesn t want to spend the money on a web design agency or make a big deal out of the event website; the client doesn t want to deal with a ton of different vendors and would rather have you handle everything the list goes on.
Without the time or budget to get a fully-customized site structured, designed and coded, your best bet is to opt for a ready-made site template that you can lightly customize and drop online.
The main advantages here are cost and speed. Pre-designed, pre-coded and imminently affordable, you can purchase these, add your client s event logo, title and content in place of the dummy content, and you re ready to rock. You ll need someone with a basic grasp of HTML to edit them and you ll still need to find hosting, so these don t get you completely off the hook in terms of hiring a web designer, but buying a pre-made template means your event site can be up and running in 8 hours, zero-to-done.
And since everyone s using their phones to these days, it s crucial that you choose a template that is optimized for phones and tablets. We scoured the internet and found a few of the best single-page event-themed templates available. Check these out:
Event Landing Page $11 HTML Theme
This basic but very functional theme is not a WordPress theme, but rather a responsive HTML-only theme with three color options.
OnEvent $11 Special Event Landing Page
Created by Dezine Themes, this landing page offers a full-screen photo background, event count-down, speaker list, and more.
EventMe $11 Special Event Landing Page
With multiple color options and all the basics, this mobile-ready single-page theme is perfect for corporate-style events. The unique stand-out feature is an animated event schedule timeline that you can fill in with your event s roster of speakers or workshop times or what-have-you.
VentCamp $11 Event Site
VentCamp is probably the prettiest of the themes we list here. This theme also features a full-screen photo background, lovely thin fonts, and an interesting callout area where you can highlight numbers that focus on the key reasons potential attendees should pony up for a ticket (example: 4 stages! 72 speakers!)
Your A/V Questions Answered: What is Pattern Projection, and What are the Possibilities?
TIPS & TRICKS
At its most basic, pattern projection and mapping is a stage lighting design technique in which a decorative pattern is washed over a large surface area to create a visual effect. In the past few years, stage lighting technology has developed so drastically that s its now capable of lifting cartoon characters out from behind screens and beaming them into real-life.
While your simple projectors might include a couple of gaudy, pre-programmed star or floral patterns in basic rotating laser lights, suitable for a dingy dance floor, more up-market varieties or clever use of mixed-method techniques, can produce stunning effects when handled by experts.
Your standard low-budget version, available for less than a couple hundred bucks, might toss out some basic patterning a la Windows Media Player, 1999:
In stark contrast, here s an example of some of the beautiful abstract patterns you can achieve what happens people who know what they re doing play around in their own studio with with a dual-lens:
These guys created a complete environment using music and pattern projection:
Curious about the future of pattern projection? Look to the East.
Following in their own glorious wait, what? tradition of giant robots and underwear vending machines, a few years ago Japan rocked up to the light-mapping party already packing a double-dose of next-level weirdness. In case you missed the uproar about it at the time, meet Hatsune Miku, an AI rock star with a synthesized voice and a body rendered entirely in 3D holographic light projection. Hitsune Miku s virtual self, backed up by a live band, performed her hit World is Mine to screaming, sold-out crowds:
Wanna play with the technology yourself on a smaller, miniaturized scale? You ll need an iPad, a mosquito screen, a miniprojector, and this video:
Neat, huh?
Image sources: Featured Image by Kevin Dooley
How to Choose the Right DJ for Your Event
TIPS & TRICKS
Not all DJs are created equal, and there are considerations above and beyond which version of the Macarena is gonna get dropped. Here are a few tips to help you hone in on the perfect DJ for your event.
For the love of all things holy, ask to listen to their demo
Most professional DJs, from Bat Mitzva beat-droppers to Goatee McSunglassesAtNight have a demo mix that showcases their skills. Listening to a DJ s demo is like checking out an artist s portfolio: it s one of the few ways you can get a real sense of what you re about to get yourself into. So if you do no other due diligence, do this. Unless you ve personally seen the DJ perform, no demo should be a dealbreaker.
There is such a thing as a DJ CV
Professional DJs often specialize, not only within a specific music genre but often within a specific type of venue or event. Some of them just do product launch parties. Some of them only lay down rock tracks at quiet little bars. A DJ CV should include a brief bio and a bit of history, so you ll get a clear idea of specialization, personality and past experience.
Ask for references
A DJ can have the chops and the right sound, but that hardly matters if they turn out to be a total flake with a coke habit. Call some past employers to lay those concerns to rest.
Ask to see a sample set list
What you re looking for here is appropriateness. A good DJ is intuitive about the perfect way to set a mood they re fluid and imaginative. A bad DJ will try to shoehorn your event attendees into his space. If the songs that they suggest don t seem to match the environment you want to achieve, you may need to ask the DJ to re-calibrate their understanding of your event s goals.
Ask what kind of equipment they expect you to have
Some DJs will rock up with just a computer loaded up with some mix software. Others will have a 20-channel mixer that needs to be incorporated into your existing sound system. Make sure their standard rigging will work with your set-up, and that you have the table-space available to accommodate their gear.
Image Sources: DJ by Montecruz Foto, Featured Image by Aurora Mixer
