February is, of course, awards show season, and we adore our recurring Grammys, Oscars, Designers Guild, and so many more gigs. But, The Kobe Memorial was yesterday, and I can't seem to shake the sadness. Such beautiful families that are stricken with tragedy, not to mention the global impact...
We were asked to do some projection work for the City of Vernon for the entire NBA season to honor Kobe. These new monster Elation Proteus fixtures did the trick from 400 feet away... Please, disregard the awful stringer lights on the legs of the Water Tower – those are an old mock-up by others. I dropped some award show shots In at the end to show my respect. Thanks to Sequoia and Jerry Hayes, and our dear NARAS clients, and all of the crew and staff that pulled off a sick month. Now, we just need these virus numbers to drop and the DOW to climb.
All in a month's work…
Remember when people laughed at the concept of doing big entertainment and events at a Mall? I do.
Mall gets last laugh...
Well, Westfield Century City is more like a Fantasyland than a mall, but their groundbreaking concept of building a massive stage and Audio/Video/Lighting rig with multiple event and activation spaces is a smash success. We were invited to manage the technical side of these shows and events almost 3 years ago, and we installed the much-beloved David Olson to be our guy on site. Things have gone so well we just added another full-timer, Alex Mackyol to the staff. I love this partnership – it's a very big corporation, but it's managed by people like you and me, so it's just another extension of the family. More cities coming!
Next Stop: (REDACTED). Stay tuned!
We're still buzzin’ a bit, a week after this one. What a wonderful process - Jeff dreams up a 360 degree LED surround concept with presentation stages on all four walls, for an upcoming UGG sales meeting. We pitch the CEO and a few of his SVPs, and they're intrigued. We then take notes from the client, re-work the design a couple of times, re-present a couple of times, and BAM, we're on. Jeff and Matt Warren then spend the next four months working on content and showflow and the overall message, alongside these hard-hitting execs. As we get closer to show time, we feel the weight of the importance of this show to a big corporation. They trusted us to deliver, so we best not blow it. We didn't. It was amazing. Then Haim comes on at the end of the 1 hour presentation and rocks everyone. It's everything any of us want in a gig - Creativity, Wicked tech, Mavericks surf just outside the venue, and Visionary clients who trust us...
Thank you, Gaia.
So I'm digging through all of our October gigs, trying to catch a vibe on what this month meant to me, and all I could see was bright color! It was great – made my day happier. Not sure why, but everyone from Anastasia to Empire Events to Adobe to Givenchy to Nicki Minaj went heavy-color at their October events. Cardi's all dyed-out, dang, even Thom Yorke embraced the full rainbow (mandatory fan-boy shot). We had a strong month – lots of opportunity to rock people's worlds, and one humbling indiscretion on live comm that we all learned and grew from.
Out of darkness comes light!
We do enjoy being busy. Mostly after we've pulled off the gigs. There has not been a dull moment lately. Here are some of the 30 gigs we did this month: Emmy's Ball with Sequoia, Super-Secret Nike thing that I can't post, Worldz, which is a most-excellent leadership conference, Nissan tour going coast-to-coast, USC gigs to welcome the new President, Insanity in Lemoore with an artificial surf pool for Breitling, audio support for NARAS as they start putting together the 2020 Grammy nominees, promotion for the new James Bond movie "No Time To Die" coming out on 04/08/2020. Oh, and Fan-Boy-ing with Bon Iver at the Forum.
That and 21 other gigs. Sorry for the rough and random post, but I gotta get on a plane!
Peace!
August was an interesting month - It was meant to be a little break between the summer stuff and the madness that's coming our way in the Fall. But a bunch of late bookings came up, and many of them were new shows on Amazon, Netflix, Epix, etc. I was most attracted to this one we did with AgenC and Netflix, screening and celebrating the new Netflix doc about Travis Scott called Look Mom I can Fly. Great story and cool gig for us - screening was at Barker Hangar and afterparty was at a joint on the third street promenade. Chris and Ryan pulled out this slick projection ribbon around the event space, and did it in a few hours. Sweet. Keep your eyes open at the end of this video for some nice projection on Sunset Tower Hotel on the strip, for Amazon's new show Carnival Row.
Stand by for September, Yo!