SPECIAL MID-MONTH POSTING! We've always said our greatest accomplishments at ShowPro are the families that we've raised while working here. Imagine this - Melissa/Ligo's boy Sol and my/Cheryl's son Charlie are heading off to college in the fall. Unreal - we're still trying to figure out how that happened so quickly. Sol is going to study business (and yeah, some theater tech) at DePaul in Chicago. Charlie is studying Music Industry and songwriting at USC Thornton. Walking Miracles... So So proud. Now we need you all to send us gigs so we can pay for this!
I don't need to tell you how excited we were to get a high profile gig at South by Southwest this year. Trust me, Cheryl and I would have been there either way, but it was cool to do something really creative with a new client in between acting like teenagers seeing bands all day and all night. Our friend Erika Urquiza is working with a new super-groovy agency in New York called A2G. They do mad stuff - all experiential events and spectacles. They brought us out to Austin to install a massive touchscreen. Relevant but tasteful imagery from their client The Gap was projected on a 12' x 32' screen and as guests interacted with the content, they produced particle and other effects. Even the bands playing in the room effected the projection. Extra Bonus - Ryan Adams and Avett Brothers played the first night. SXSW sawed us in half this year - just the way we like it.
It's awards season so that means two-for-one. We worked on the big Recording Academy Grammy post party at the convention center, as well as the Sequoia-produced Governors Ball for the Oscars. Such a great honor to be involved with both. Seriously, we feel super lucky that we continue to get invited back to work on two of the premier special events in the world. Grammys had a CandyLand type feel - Like Katy Perry CandyLand - kind of psychedelic and really fun for guests. Oscars was gorgeous and subdued and masculine and classy. I don't have a shot of our Oscars room and it's the last day of the month so rather than blow the post, I've included a shot of the broadcast stage. That thing was gorgeous - It's all about content - You can have massive projection or LED, but without stellar content, it's just gear. Here's to the creative types!!
Visual Artist Chris Milk is touring the world with a large scale interactive Triptych, which has stopped at the Sundance Film Festival this week. Don't worry, I had to look up Triptych, too. It's a story of birth, death and transfiguration realized on three massive projection screens. We did the lighting, video and audio installation for producer Mitch Kirsch at Planet Events who rep'ed Milk and his team. This is three big screens with a shallow reflecting pool in front of them. Guests come up to each of the screens and their shadows are digitally captured and reprojected. Milk's software then paints the shadows with 3D models of birds growing, then deconstructing, then experiencing rebirth. Really Cool. Massive amounts of snow up at Sundance and cold, too, which makes a visit to this installation even more Triptychy.
Local madman and Kanye West Lighting Designer John McGuire was tapped by Audemars Piguet the French Luxury Watchmaker to turn 2 Rodeo into a winter wonderland. He did. Well, we did with him. Insane design that had us flying versatubes over the uber-fancy guests, with fire pits and hot chocolate and baked brie and snow everywhere. Seemed ambitious and it was - Required installation over two nights, then striking everything to restore the street for tourists each day, before the show. The final re-installation happened 2 hours before doors. It looked trippy as hell which is exactly what a luxury french watchmaker should be shooting for as far as I'm concerned.
Ain't gonna happen, fellas. This is Lily Aldridge - She's a Victoria's Secret Angel which means she's like Charlie's favorite Angel. She's standing next to a 2 million dollar bra made of diamonds. VS brought us in to do a moving step and repeat backdrop for a press event. Pretty good idea actually as every photo of Lily is different because of the moving fireworks visuals behind her. We brought an LED wall in to the VS store on the third street promenade - no easy task. But it went up quickly and the client was happy and the press didn't complain too too much. I'm a Dodger fan, but I no longer hate the Angels for some reason.
Let's See - October 2015 brought us a big Viacom integrated marketing and concert event, an automotive tour, gigs with the New York Times and BET, outfitting a touring bus for our Jordanah friends and a bunch more. However, October 1995 was me and my mullet rockin' the ultimate partnership with my beautiful wife Cheryl, in New Jersey. Twenty years ago today, Oct. 22, we got married. Imagine that - we've had a couple of great gigs ourselves over the last two decades including a big one in 1997 (Charlie) and another in 2000 (Olivia). Maybe in 20 more years the mullet and the big Jersey hair will be back in style??
Happy Anniversary, Honey!
Seriously Magical environment here. This was a great example of an event where the gig looked better than the renderings. This photo really doesn't do it justice but it's all I got. Cheryl and Andrea and the Sequoia team designed this dream-land experience with crystals and shimmer and champagne. Such a cool place to hang out. This was a little bash for 5,000 across the street from the Microsoft Theater for the 2015 Primetime Emmy Awards. A bunch of happy winners and a whole lot more disappointed nominees-only. Oh well, we're not all fleeing war in Syria, so we'll keep our chins up. Shout Out to Matt Levesque for stellar lighting design.
Another day, another Pharrel hit. This time it's the new Adidas Superstar line of sneakers where those-we-follow designed righteous looks for the classic Shelltoe. Got to hang with another super cool creative collective from Portland called Kamp Grizzly on this one. Happening producers with happening clients - that's all we ask for. On this show Adidas invited 200 kids to come in and design their own sneakers. These designs were then projected on to a giant Shelltoe prop as you can see in the picture. All of this madness went down at Milk Studios in Hollywood, including performances by Pharell and Pusha T. Kickin it old school!
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was honored for the occasion of his 80th birthday at a whole bunch of gigs around Orange County this week. Yeah, Ariadne at A-Team included us in all of em - sound, lighting, video. Seriously, thank you Ari - She brings us Snoop and Charli XCX and The Dalai Lama - who could ask for more? This picture is from the Honda Center - 18,000 people connecting with the DL's message of compassion and love and kindness. When our guys mic'ed him up, they felt it - this man pure. Give More Than You Take!
June in LA means E3 to a lot of us. E3 means gaming, gaming, gaming. Do you realize the gaming industry has higher revenues than film, television and music combined? Hard to believe but it's true. That's why so many companies like ours are out of their minds in June every year. This was an especially good one for us because we took on a new client - Best Events brought us in to support their Bethesda show at the Dolby Theater. We provided close to 1,000 tiles of LED for this one. Loved working with Mel and Steven Sockey who produced for Jeffrey Best.