Two-thousand attendees. Dozens of high-powered executives. A cavalcade of actors and one rock star, Lenny Kravitz, topping off the night. Putting on the annual Turner Upfront event, where TBS and TNT sell their upcoming season and programs to advertisers of Turner Broadcasting, is no small feat. This year set designers Atomic Design not only transformed the Theatre at Madison Square Garden into a flashy corporate showcase, they also reinvented the lobby as a glitzy faux nightclub for the after-party.
While Atomic is known for their touring designs—they recently worked with Martina McBride and Julio Iglesias, among others— they have also taken on corporate events as well as television specials (Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame), award shows (Japanese VMAs), and special events (Thalia Fashion Show). They have even spun off a rental business with products that they have built for shows. For years now they have worked with Turner on their annual advertiser showcase, and the 2006 spectacle featured a stage loaded with LED grids and a giant video screen.
The teams behind Turner Upfront know each other well as they collaborate annually on the event. The main parties include Atomic Design (producer and stage designer) and David Stark Design and Production (party production and decor), along with a team of vendors including Scharff Weisberg (video), Firehouse Productions (audio) and Production Solutions, Inc. (lighting vendor).
Executive producer Soren West observes that the pressure for this event comes not during planning, but during the execution of the event itself, from the parade of talent and their handlers to the complex series of cues and stage changes. But he also remarks that egos are not a problem and that everyone involved is there to have a good time. Associate producer Tricia Fackler adds that logistics are key to this event, from the PR requirements to getting people onto the stage.
“Corporate budgets are a little different,” observes West. “They’re beefier in some areas and tighter in other areas. Generally they’re willing to spend money to get their message across. They have a much more concise objective than, say, a rock concert, where the objective is to make money every night. The objective here is to communicate a brand, and if they can effectively communicate brand by spending a little extra, they will do that. From that point of view, these guys are great to work with. They’re not afraid to do it right. They have a great eye for detail, and they love the collaborative process.”
Branding was a key factor in the 2006 Turner event. This year David Stark designed a logo that merged the circle logo of TBS and the half-moon of TNT. The new logo appeared in the walls of the lounge space as well as on the LED grids and the two large light boxes flanking the stage.
Atomic Design founder and primary designer Tom McPhillips started work on the show, and handed it off to associate designer Michael Rhoads to finish. Rhoads observes that working on a corporate event can be tougher than television. “The finish has to be much more perfect, especially if it’s a high-end client,” he states. “They can see it up close and personal. They can touch it, they can look at the finish, they can see if you sewed it well. On TV, you’re removed 20 feet from the camera, and then you’re watching it on a small screen. A lot of details will get lost. Although we can’t really say that too much anymore, because with high-definition TV coming in, every little flaw will show up.”
The most striking aspect of the lounge was a backlit Plexiglas® wall sporting a continuous pattern of Stark’s hybrid Turner logo. It was a polycarbonate wall made up of two layers: a solid frosted pane in front of another layer printed in white with the logo pattern, giving it a soft focus look, especially when backlit with Color Kinetics Color Blasts and Color Blazes from the floor. Additionally, Stark requested 130,000 beads for the columns in the room. Aside from the wall, columns, moving lights and catering, the two side hallways leading to the venue had long tables for group dining.
Naturally the main event, the corporate presentation and the rock concert afterward, took place in the Theatre proper. Atomic created a stage with a large center screen flanked by grids of LEDs and two side screens. The idea was to create a dynamic environment for speakers, but also allow for the show’s main host, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, to bring stars of all the shows to stage right and interview them in front of the audience.
West stresses that the big center screen onstage, created by Atomic in widescreen format from raw RP materials made by Da-Lite, was the focus of the corporate presentation, particularly as this was a television-oriented event. “One of the challenges was having these people onstage and trying not to have any light bounce onto the screen,” he says. “We tried to have a nice, deep stage and keep them downstage. From a staging point of view, the biggest challenge was delivering that big center screen, delivering flawless lighting on stars without disturbing that big center screen, and creating a transition from that big center screen to a rock concert in front of the audience.”
In terms of lighting for Turner Upfront, the lounge was made up primarily of Vari*Lite VL5s and ‘6s, as well as conventional fixtures. “We had a lot of VL1000s, the incandescent Vari*Lites with shutters, to do the main stage and performance area in the theatre,” says lighting designer Abigail Holmes, “as well as Martin MAC moving lights that are primarily used for the band and some of our scenery. We had a lot of Color Kinetics’ Color Blazes and Color Blasts in both parts of the show. They were lighting the frosted Plexi’ wall up here in the party area, and they lit some of the scenic pieces in the theatre. Then one thing that’s interesting in the theatre is that broken-up LED that we were driving had a beautiful, metallic, scrim-like cloth in front that was lit at the same time as that LED behind it. Mixing that was part of what made that unusual.”
Holmes, who primarily handles rock concerts such as Martina McBride and The Cure, found Turner Upfront to have its own special challenges every year. “Designing the theatre is always interesting because there are some technical restrictions that make it a challenge,” she remarks. “We have two very different shows that share the stage. One is the Turner presentation, and the second is putting a band on the stage. It’s not always easy to fit both those things into one space. The fact that the band must be revealed limits the physical amount of space for the corporate presentation, which makes it quite a challenge to fit the scenery and the lighting into the space that’s left. We do our best to be very creative, to multiuse fixtures and locations so that they the work for both parts of the event.”
“One of the things that makes this collaboration interesting as that we’ve got people from television and rock ‘n’ roll working together with people from a very structured, big, corporate culture,” declares West. “Our role as producers is to be the liaison, or translator, between those cultures, and see that the corporate objectives are met. Those are very articulate, concise objectives, and our style in production has a little bit of a cowboy edge to it. We’re used to shooting from the hip or dealing with the unexpected. We function as a team from a slightly different culture, so I think marrying those two is part of the fun of this corporate event.”
Even in corporate America, the Wild West is alive and well.
