More importantly, spending on group events, according to The New York Times, is expected to increase six percent this year, to almost $116 billion, compared with an earlier prediction of 5.2 percent growth in 2013. Other indications of a revitalizing events market are the increase in the number of new convention centers, like the just-opened 350,000-square-foot, $623 million Music City Center in Nashville. The live event business — corporate presentations, company offsite meetings — is back.
A Visual Point of Difference
What this also means is that meeting planners are ramping up their plans for clients’ events, and they are looking for ways to excite corporate clients and differentiate their spaces for them. They’re looking at audio, video, lighting and projection systems to help them do that. There are several key areas where technology is going to make more of a difference. The old pipe-and-drape backgrounds and stacked-box sound systems won’t be cutting it when businesses start cutting checks again for more sophisticated live events.
Video mapping is replacing the static backdrop. Software programs from companies such as Red Hen Systems and coolux allow single and multiple projectors to create 3D backdrops on cycloramas that are dynamic and, in some cases, interactive, or synched to music and other audio effects. Other light-based solutions can achieve striking results with other types of products, such as Atomic Design’s modular pillows and wafers.
Thank television game and competition shows for increased demand for these sorts of effects; the kinds of special lighting effects viewers are seeing on shows like The Voice and Dancing With The Stars are inspiring AV clients and production companies to find their own version of that. In fact, competition programs like those and others tend to set the pace for corporate live events that like to position their clients as winners in whatever markets they’re in.
More Visual Bang, Fewer Bucks
New trends in lighting not only promise to emulate what’s seen on television but also accomplish that objective cost-effectively — a $7,000 illuminated-wafer wall whose components can be reused is a lot more attractive, economically speaking, than a $20,000 hard set that just gets trashed after the event is over. In fact, these kinds of virtual sets created by mapping seem to have overtaken another AV technology that many observers thought would become the go-to effect for live events: video teleconferencing. VTC turns out to be more expensive and less impressive than mapping, in part perhaps because teleconferencing has become so ubiquitous through highly affordable services like GoToMeeting.com that use the same flat-panel displays we have at home and in the office. Video mapping, while accessible, is still exotic.
Sound system designers also know that the look of the stage has become as important for live corporate events as it is for theatrical ones, which is why we’ve seen the line array migrate to this environment as well. Line arrays are designed to be flown and to keep stages clear while offering coverage, intelligibility and a full-range reproduction for music. Event designers can also take advantage of the emergence of smaller, slimmer column-type line arrays from suppliers such as K-Array, TOA and JBL that fit the needs of mid-sized and small ballrooms. And line arrays are designed to work in conjunction with subwoofers, perhaps the single most important sound system component of the last 20 years. Music, film and, increasingly, television have come to rely on low-frequency information (just listen to the background sound design on Mad Men when they’re in the office — yes, that’s what Manhattan actually sounds like with the windows closed) and people have come to expect it as part of any presentation, entertainment or otherwise. Rare is even the house of worship sound system built without subs these days.
User Control Expands
Other trends to watch for as the live-events market heats up again include the fact that clients have come to expect more direct control over the AV and projection systems used for their events. Thank the proliferation of smartphones and tablets for that. Two of the biggest AV systems providers, PSAV and AVT, both now offer smartphone and tablet apps that allow their sales personnel to lay out the look of an event site virtually, giving the clients a much clearer picture of what a systems design will look like. PSAV’s SwankDraw is a good example: it uses the iPad’s drag-and-drop capability to allow users to place icons for elements including pillow walls, spandex screens, truss accents, line array hangs, intelligent lighting and video monitors into a virtual ballroom space. It’s not a huge leap to begin to see those clients wanting to have apps for their own devices to control these systems themselves to a greater degree.
Getting the live-event sector back into high gear will be a welcome boost for lighting, staging and projection providers. Corporate clients are going to be pleasantly surprised with the new array of technologies that can get their messages out there like never before.
