The Fourth of July just passed, which is Christmas and New Year’s all rolled together for the pyro industry. But no sooner have the last em-bers of a glory star fallen to the ground, than the live special effects business starts figuring out how to make an even more complex magic act foolproof enough for Bon Jovi and Pfizer.
With the shift in entertainment economic dynamics away from prepackaged media and toward live and on-demand modes, live special effects are taking center stage. A kind of spectacular-venue arms race is heating up demand for live SFX and, in the process, is driving up prices for the most advanced systems. FogScreen’s new walk-through system has a suggested rental cost of $3,500 per day, and with a screen and 10K lumens projector, the daily costs could be as much as $7,000. And companies launching products, reaffirming brands or opening new nightclubs are more than willing to pay that kind of money.
What’s the Connection?
The connection between the world of rock‘n’roll and the corporate universe has never been stronger than with SFX. The classic exam-ple is Genesis’ world tour from a couple of decades ago, for which they locked up the first automated moving headlights. After that, rock stars competed with CEOs to get that same technology for their events. Corporate events may be big moneymakers for legacy performers, but corporations also want the latest and greatest on their stages when it comes to technology.
“Pre-9/11, it was, ‘Give us as much spectacular as we can afford’; after 9/11, it was, ‘We want it all,’” comments David Kenyon, an ex-ecutive producer in Nashville for TBA Global, the world’s second-largest corporate event producer. He suspects that the stock market might also be a useful barometer of how in demand live SFX is at any given time. “They want to know that they have the latest and the greatest, to impress the shareholders and the managers and to associate their brand and products with leading-edge technology.”
Current Trends
High-definition video seems to be the tech-couture of the moment. Screen masking and edge blending give high-def projectors the canvas they need to create almost any environment or ambience. Water and fog effects now create malleable curtains that reveal the products and simultaneously hold the PowerPoint talking points for it. Companies like High End Systems, Barco and Folsom all have up-dated their existing products to feed the demand for more sophisticated live SFX — for example, High End’s DL-2 digital luminaire is a moving projector and now also a media server. And dedicated SFX developers like FogScreen, which makes a projection system for mi-croscopic water droplets, report brisk business.
Jorden Woods, president of U.S. operations for FogScreen, suggests that advertising overkill in traditional venues — such as television, print and online — is driving the use and development of live SFX. “We’re bombarded by so much advertising from billboards to cell phones,” he says. “Systems like the FogScreen let people interact with the brand, and that brings a level of excitement and engagement back to marketing.”
FogScreen’s systems are used for events — they accompanied the Budweiser/Maxim tour to 45 cities last year — but are also showing up as permanent installations in high-end venues such as nightclubs and aboard cruise ships. Woods says that close to 100 systems have been sold so far, at about $80,000 per unit.
Client Demands
Joe Tawil, president of GAM Inc., which makes lighting and projection systems for live SFX, and who has been around since “moving lights” were a Fresnel with a person attached to them, says effects tend to follow the same route as fashion. “People will ask, ‘Do you have Vari-Lites,’ and not even know what that means,” he says. “But people are also keen to utilize the high technology that keeps com-ing out.”
He says that while demand for leading-edge technology is always there, rental houses typically tend to shy away from what is often a substantial investment until they see critical mass begin to form around a particular effect. “If they have an older effect in place that’s paid for, they’ll want to wring everything they can out of it first, and that’s understandable,” he says. “You can make a lot of money on a new effect, but only if you choose carefully and get in early and big, and that doesn’t happen very often.”
Tawil further says that SFX is driven by what designers want, but convergence may change that. FogScreen’s Woods says that R&D is ramping up throughout the sector, and SFX developers are beginning to partner with other companies, such as FogScreen’s recently inked deals with Reactrix and Playmotion.
Ron Graham, vice president of business development at PRG, says that he looks for technologies that can give the company an ad-vantage during the limited window of exclusivity that comes with the acquisition of a very new system. He’s also aware that PRG’s scale can make or break a particular SFX technology, so he’s careful about the ability to continue to support, maintain and expand on a platform. “I’d say that 3-D video and media servers are going to be key effects now and in the future,” he comments. “Interactivity is crucial — making the viewer feel like part of the event.”
Live special effects are going to become more special and more lucrative as they move toward achieving a cinematic level of expe-rience. In fact, live SFX and prerecorded visuals already are being used together, such as in the track house a brewer uses as a marketing platform at NASCAR tracks.
The fuse for the next generation of effects has been lit.
Contact Dan at ddaley@plsn.com.
