Most lighting designers and programmers have done a corporate show at some point, right? They are the bread and butter of our industry in many ways, so it’s hard not to find yourself sitting in a hotel ballroom at 3:00 a.m. from time to time, working on a show that will end as soon as that CEO makes his big announcement. All of these corporate shows have one thing in common…VIDEO…and usually lots of it. What does this all mean to a lighting programmer exactly? Well, it’s funny that you should ask. And the answer is so important to you that you could end up making your life (and the producer’s life) a nightmare if you don’t understand the purpose and use of video in a corporate show.
Here’s a list of the video sources we used in a pretty straight-forward corporate show I worked on recently:
• I-Mag (we had four camera inputs)
• Graphics (company logos)
• Video Tape (two inputs for crossfades)
• DVD and/or VCR
• PowerPoint
Let’s talk about the personnel for this show. For I-Mag, there were two camera operators plus a video director who handled all of the source switching. There were two people handling the graphics, doing such things as managing the images that were supplied by the client ahead of time, cleaning up last minute additions and creating logos onsite for guest speakers and any other changes and/or surprises that the producer sprung on them. Another person set up the A/B tape rolls for the video tape deck, loading the correct tapes, cueing them and looping them as needed. And lastly, the frantic PowerPoint operator dealt with each speaker’s PowerPoint files, making last second changes. As you can see, there are quite a few people involved in making a corporate show successful despite the last minute frenzy of technical issues, production number changes and other surprises that are inevitably dropped in our laps.
So why is this all important to a lighting programmer? Because prior to digital lighting, the lighting programmer’s biggest concern was preventing the video screens from being washed out while trying to light the speakers with a good stage wash. Now, however, with the addition of DMX-controlled media servers, the lighting programmer is often thrust into the video mix. And on a corporate show, that can spell “big disaster” if everyone involved isn’t fully aware of the workload that is being assigned to the lighting programmer.
For example, this particular corporate show involved two 60-foot wide by 20- foot high video screens flanking either side of the stage with a 40-foot screen upstage, making for a video image that spanned well over 150 feet. The producer envisioned a lot of eye candy on these walls, and he had planned to use eight High End Systems DL.2s on the show (four units on each wall). But, the DLs would have been the video source for everything. Could the DL.2s handle that? You bet; they absolutely could, with the right adapters, converters and cables. Could I have handled that workload on top of programming the stage lighting? Truthfully, it is unlikely I would have been able to keep up with that kind of workload, given our long days of breakfast shows, afternoon breakout meetings, client rehearsals and evening shows, all in the same room. I’m exhausted just writing about it. Why do I say that? Because all of the content for three days of show would have had to have been pre-rendered and loaded into the DL.2s before arriving onsite, but with load-in set for the day before the show, there would not have been time for any onsite content manipulation. And don’t forget that on these shows, many times the speakers walk in with content of their own, so rendering that content on the spot in time for the rehearsal would be impossible. And with my hands on a console during that time, who would be handling the content, formatting it and loading it into the DL.2?
After careful discussion with the production company, it was decided that sticking with the tried and true method of using separate video sources and projecting them through four 10K lumen Barco projectors made the most sense given the time restraints and projection distances (the recommended throw distance is 18-20 feet for the DL.2s, but they would have had to be rigged 40 feet back). While the images from a DL.2 could have been scaled down to fit on the wall, there would be a large number of unused pixels to make that work, resulting in an image without the visual impact that the client had in mind. These are very important factors to consider, and I’m very pleased that the production company understood the client’s expectations well enough to know not to risk it.
On similar sized shows using DL.2s as the single output device, you will typically need several days to do grid alignments, load content and program the show complete with cues for input switching. We just simply couldn’t have done that on this corporate show, though, as time in a ballroom at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas is too expensive. So it pays to know your limitations as well as your features. Your client will be happier for it, too.
Vickie Claiborne is a freelance lighting director, programmer and trainer. She can be reached at vclaiborne@plsn.com.
