Staging Solutions uses moving video to turn corporate theatre on its head.
The blessing of corporate work is that it’s predictable, right? Contracts for the larger shows are drawn up a year in advance, design work is pored over and sent around to corporate committees for approvals months before the gig happens, and even if something comes up right before the show goes out, it’s a minor problem — just a run-of-the-mill production snag to keep things interesting. And then, sometimes you’re asked to do the spectacular in no time flat, like Dave Lawson of Staging Solutions, executive producer for the HP Technology Forum.
“We’ve been doing shows for HP for about nine years,” Lawson says, standing onstage at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. “There were some discussions about where we wanted to go with this event with my HP contact — a friend who I’ve known for many years, Jim McNally — but then it just sort of died away.” Lawson pauses, and looks up at one of the six moving video walls that his crew has installed. “Then a couple of months out, they pulled the gloves off.”
For the record, pulling the gloves off for a corporate gig means that in addition to the six moving video walls, there are two 75-foot-by-25-foot panoramic video screens, a hydraulic lift under the stage for product and performer reveals, a pillow wall and other soft goods for the cyc, a jib camera plus two more at front of house for I-mag, not to mention the lipstick cameras on set to get close-ups, and the infrared cameras to watch for performer readiness in the temporary catwalk Staging Solutions installed underneath the existing catwalk at Mandalay Bay. HP’s theme for the show was that the company wanted to turn technology on its head. HP almost did the same with the design team. But when the directive (and the money) comes down to make a show bigger — you take it, despite the challenges.
Getting Up to Speed
Thanks to the long relationship McNally has with Lawson, HP felt comfortable challenging Staging Solutions for a larger design with more impact under severe time constraints. Lawson proposed the idea of a moving video wall, and the idea was greeted with enthusiasm, but HP wanted even more than that. Lawson brought Mark Perkinson in as technical director, enlisted Sean McCarthy to design the set and lights and brought Drew Griffith on board as lead video engineer. The team got to work.
“The show has a really broad spectrum of media elements,” says McCarthy. “The opening is a real spectacle of activity — the aerialists, the video, the live bands — when you bring them all together into one show, it’s quite an elaborate production.”
This elaborate production caused a few headaches on the load in. First, due to the increase in size, Perkinson had to convince folks at Mandalay Bay to give them the arena an extra day in advance, and then convince HP that they would need to pay for it, with all the man hours and OT it would demand. But with a shortened prep schedule, and design elements that demanded extra care, even that extra day got full quickly.
“There are only so many crystal balls you can use,” says Perkinson. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I started as a rigger; I’ve done everything. With the schedule this tight, we were basically running 24-hour shifts to build this. You really got to say, well, eight hours I’m going to need these resources — what’s the overtime? What’s the budget? We were behind from the moment they started rigging this, and I had 24 riggers in the air.”
But by Sunday morning, the stage was built, the video walls hung and the secondary catwalk installed. Over 10,000 feet of truss on 150 points held it all up, and it was time for video and lighting to take center stage.
Out Here in the Field
The idea was to make the CEO of HP into a new Sun King, a rock ‘n’ roll business demigod, emphasizing the theme of the event, that HP was turning IT on its head. For the opening, while The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” played, the video walls would move to the center and settle on the stage, while the Syncrolites would light up a “sun” on the stage for the CEO to enter through. Over the course of the next two days, the video wall would move and reconfigure itself for each of the major presenters. Lawson and Perkinson worked with XL Video and Show Rig to get the mechanics of the wall in place, while Lawson and McCarthy worked with design house Jupiter Media to fill the walls with content appropriate to the show — and it all came from an idea by Lawson.
“It was something that Dave Lawson and I have talked about wanting to do for a corporate show for a while,” says McCarthy. “We were able to negotiate some good pricing with XL Video, so we were actually able to get a bigger and higher LED wall than we all really thought was going to be possible at first, and then it all cascaded from there.”
Griffith was the man it all cascaded to. He was in charge of making sure the many show control signals, video feeds and media servers all played nicely with a moving video wall.
“Anybody can play a huge LED wall,” says Griffith, “But when you break it up into six sections, and the cables have to track and you go up and down, then cable management is one of the biggest issues. It took three days and multiple shifts, day guys and night guys — the communication has to be there.”
Staging Solutions used a Vista Systems Spider and four Grass Valley Turbo media servers, as well as the live feeds and any other feeds the clients might bring in for their presentations for the I-mag. The Turbos housed the corporate messaging and video playback, but Staging Solutions also had a Catalyst media server for transitions and video during a performance by the rock band Train on the last day of the conference. And of course, there were Beta and DV players in video world for the last-minute video that someone brought and just had to be used. They used a show control software package called Fresco to send time code to all the devices and to keep them in synch, firing off media at the correct times.
Hugh Howarth and George Scontsas at Jupiter Media designed the animations, and they went over well.
“The work Powers has done to incorporate the content of the moving LED walls is just amazing,” says Parkinson. “We’ve got huge content zooming all around. These screens are zooming, picture-in-picture zooming — the multiple layers of physicality and the multiple layers of video — the images are in constant motion to develop this content and show what we’re doing here. He’s done a brilliant job.”
“He’s the man,” adds Lawson.
Conventionally Speaking
Due to the focus on video and motion control, the lighting for the show was pared down and focused to its bare essentials. A scattering of automated Vari*Lite VL5s, Martin MAC 2000s and Syncrolite units were able to set the stage and provide emphasis where necessary, which was atypical for a gig of this size.
“This is probably one of the most modest lighting designs we’ve had, because all the budget went to video,” says Perkinson. “Usually we have easily twice more the lighting fixtures.”
Controlling those fixtures was an MA Lighting grandMA console, programmed by Troy Eckerman. Blake Brown called the show. According to Designer McCarthy, though, sometimes sheer numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“The 74 moving lights is not a whole big number, but it works in such a broad palette of media,” says McCarthy. “I mean, you have the really large pan screens, the moving LED wall and then the lighting system, with a lot of LED and (Color Kinetics) Color Blazes and iColor Flex, a smattering of Syncrolites, a handful of wash and spot fixtures — it’s got a real broad spectrum of media elements that are all being brought together in a real spectacle.”
And that’s what fits into the Staging Solutions vision of a corporate show.
“We’ve always focused a lot more on the theatrical side of things, how to create a little more excitement, more than the four screens on stage and the lighting,” notes Lawson. “It’s different than rock ‘n’ roll. It’s always how do you best take the clients’ message and sell it. Why are they up here? Why do these people come here? These people pay 1,500 bucks to come here to get trained — but not only did they come here to get trained, they came here to see a show, and we want to give them that.”
Maybe corporate theatre doesn’t have to be so dull after all.
CREW
For Staging Solutions:
Dave Lawson: Executive Producer
Mark Perkinson: Technical Director
Drew Griffith: Lead Video Engineer
Sean McCarthy: Scenic & Lighting Designer
Blake Brown: Show Call Director
Troy Eckerman: Lighting Programmer
Rusty Bumgardner: Audio Engineer
For Jupiter Media:
George Scontsas: Video Producer & Director
Hugh Howarth: Creative Media Director
GEAR
14 Barco R20 projectors
14 Barco 1.6–2.0 HB lenses
6 Barco I-Lite (7 mil) LED walls
1 DTrovision 18×18 DVI router
10 Folsom Image Pro HD
1 Fresco Show control/media playback
4 Grass Valley -G Turbo DDR w/Op Mons
1 GVG DA Tray w/7 cards
1 Isis 32×32 RGBHV router
1 Pesa Ocelot 16×16 HD-SDI router
1 SDI flypack
1 Sony DSC 1024 HD
1 Vista “Montage II” control console
1 Vista Spyder
1 Vista Spyder 362
1 Vista Spyder 344
8 DVI splitters
2 DVI detectives
2 DVI voosters
2 DVI to VGA converters
2 DVI CAT5 Tx/Rx Pairs w/power brick (blue)
2 DVI Breakouts (DVI & VGA)
2 25’ x 76’ rear screens
2 18’ x 24’ front screens
4 Sony D50 cameras
2 86x lenses
16 1×4 DVI DAs
10 ADA-6-300 RGBHV DAs
10 RGBHV Humbuckers
10 Composite Humbuckers
3 Video PD system
