New York Toy Fair 2012

SO I am currently on a plane flying home from New York city after completing a successful booth for Screen Life Games and the great game Scene It. You know this game, it is a board game that comes with a DVD and you move around the board to clips from movie's, tv show's etc. It's a great game.

Well, Screen Life wanted to do something original for their booth that really showed off their video content and we helped them figure it out!

we got the call from the guys over at Exhibit Lighting Group, who did a great job with the lighting, to help figure out how to make Screen Life's ideas come to life. The idea was this, make a wall of monitors that can play a file that will both put individual pictures and 1 large picture together.

This was the diagram I received:

Looks pretty simple, right?? Well, it really was, and it was a lot of fun. We used one of our multi headed video servers to put together exactly what they were looking for. And it turned out great, as you can see below.

I also thought you may want to see a short video of it in action. Enjoy! Please give us a call if you want to more of the details.

Comicon 2010

We are working with the amazing people over at ShowPro at Comicon today. We are working on a monitor tower for Fox with 11 plasmas, 2 65", 2 50" and 7 42" all from pannasonic. This is a scarry tower going up but it's pretty amazing. Hoping to have it fully up and running by tomorrow.

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The USS New York, a new meaning to my business

So, it has dawned on me that I have been doing events now for over 15 years. During that time, I have done every size of show, from a high end investor meeting for ten people in a suite in San Francisco to the Women’s Conference for eighteen thousand. I have been able to work with presidents, called camera’s for Ray Charles, TD’d for Tony Blair, and run tours for Apple computers. After all of that, I am blown away when an event can touch me as much as this event did for me.

I was asked by my great friends at Broadcast Support to fly to New York to do a couple of video screens for the commissioning of the USS New York. Sounded like a great gig, and like it would be a lot of fun, but boy was I in for a major surprise! If you don't know about this ship, click here, http://www.ussnewyork.com/

This is a pretty amazing vessel, 7 tons of steel from the wreckage of the world trade center from 9/11 was forged into the bow of this boat, and it was amazing to be a part of it.

These two photos are of the vessel. Broadcast support was brought in to do the sound for the main presentation, as well as sound and video for an over flow area that was for victims of the 9/11 tragedy's families, survivors, fire fighters, NYPD, etc. And this was my responsibility.

It started out like any other event, days of set up and rehearsal, except I got to climb around on an amazing feet of engineering! A commissioning is basically the Navy's way of saying that this ship is now part of the Navy, and it is an impressive show to watch and be a part of.

I actually took this picture during rehearsal from the bridge deck with my 300 millimeter zoom lens. On the right is Scott Ramsay from Broadcast Support and on the left is one small portion of Navy and Marines from the ship. The ceremony was from pier 86, which is where the USS Intrepid is stationed, so that was pretty cool to be in the shadow of that amazing aircraft carrier.

So the morning of the commissioning was pretty amazing in its own right. I got in early to make sure that everything was in working order and was amazed to see what I do believe was 2,000 to 2500 seats for dignitaries and family members of those serving on the USS New York.

This is a picture of Elvis from Broadcast support that morning and a small portion of the seats.

Once everything was up and running there, I went to pier 88, which is where I was doing the over flow, and got everything up and running there. Once the event started, I was blown away by the amount of people and the emotion in the room.



As I said before, most of these people were either survivors of the 9/11 tragedy of family members of those who did not survive. And there were a lot of them, we guess over 4,000. As the speeches began and all the dignitaries talked about the people of New York and the tragedy and what the steel in the ship meant and how this was a reincarnation of a city, there were 4,000 pairs of eyeballs crying. The commander of the ship spoke last, and he told of how proud he was, and how proud the crew was to represent the city and the people of New York and how they would never forget what happened that day and how both he and his crew new their responsibility to rise above terror and to do good in the world. The emotion of the people who have been through an amazing tragedy and seeing that my little projection screens actually helped some of these people to heal was truly an amazing and emotional experience.


So I have to say that after an extremely hard summer, and gratefully a grueling fall, this show was a great reminder of why I do what I do, and why I love it so much! So, Scott and Elvis, thanks for the gig!

Best Buy!!!

Well good afternoon! Been a while since I have posted anything here but I can't wait for you to check this blog out! The question is, how do you turn this:


Into This:

Well, that is what I am here to tell you! My amazing partner Richard Quezada over at QAV productions is blessed enough to have Best Buy as a client. So, Richard got a call about doing an event but they want to have a special event, something to make it really stand out. Hence the pictures.

The real bummer about the pictures is that you don't see the dramatic movement in the stars. So to let you know about what Don't Wonder was brought in to do; Richard designed the room and we helped make it look good! I was in charge of lighting and video effects, basically helping to make the room unique. We ligned the room with Colorblast LED's, put a couple Martin Mac 250's behind the stage, hung a couple of Spandex Stars at the back side of the stage, added a 6500 Lumen Profector behind each screen, as well as two lekos with Gobos in them. The clients theme was Invest, Engage, Inspire: Fan the Fire, so thats what we went with!


This is the close up of what the stars looked like when finished!

The real problem here is how do we fill the star but not blind the audience. So we started with a fire video
.
Then, I took a picture of the star,


Made a matte of it in After effects to make it look like this:


Which gave us a look like this:



But, this is a three day event and we want to make it new and fresh so I then worked in After Effects and started playing with the video here:


Which helped give this look:


And then, I really wanted to give them something special, and since they are best buy, we went with this great video look!

Which made the room look spectacular!


And, just so you know, it was not all about video, but I also had some great lighting looks as well!




What a great event! Another great part of this event is we have screens on all sides so it does not limit the presenters to being on the stage in front of the room, they were able to really get into the room and interact with the attendees.

If you have any questions about this event or how we did it, give us a call!

What a mess!

So, I wish I could show you great photos of what is going on with the move, could tell you how amazing everything is going, but it would scare you!! The move is going great, but as any good move goes, you realize how much you have, and how much you have to go through! In the middle of all this, I have been in two wedding, as well as getting a great new project ready for a show in Kentucky of all places!

I am doing two 3 projector blends with simultaneous images going on each side for an event that is a birthday party for Megavision Arts using my Scalable Display computers. I am looking forward to this event, even though I won't be there!! It is this weekend and I will be ministering a wedding for my great friend Amy! So I am sending Richard to Kentucky, to run the system and show off the power of these systems. I originally bought them for a Tradeshow / showroom for Furniture Mart in Las Vegas last January.






So Scalable Displays is this great product that I have talked about before, I used the product on my trade show booth, but this is a different use. The pictures above show pretty much exactly what is going to happen in Kentucky, but on a smaller scale. We have three projectors pointing at a wall and use a camera to make sure that it looks great and blended! I am looking forward to the gig, hope all goes well, have a great night!

A new space!!

So, I do believe that the time has come! It has been a great two years in Atlantic Place, but I do believe it is time to move on. I am hopefully gonna sign a lease on a new space, and let me tell you, this scares the hell out of me!! It is the slow season, and I have several out of town weddings this month, so I am severely cash strapped, and yes, I am deciding it is time to upgrade!!



So what you are seeing here, are little drawings we did of what will hopefully be the new space.

It is over twice the size of what I currently have, but if you read my post about Hotel California, you would know it is time to grow! So this building will put both my office and a great warehouse in the same place!!



These are pictures of the ware house, and there is lots of office space upstairs for Don't Wonder Post! That's whats exciting right now, I am also in the process of starting up Don't Wonder Post with a great editor, Charles Jones! A great opportunity to bring my love of content creation into my love of live events! Charles Jones is one of the most creative guys I have ever met, he has a passion for editing and is award winning at it, and I feel honored to be working with him and his team. And this is a big part of the reason for a new office space, the two big offices below.


These will be Edit Suites 1 and 2 for Don't Wonder Post! I can't wait to get this more off the ground. We did our first big gig recently for St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. We made them cry!! Charles and I have been doing projects together for several years now so I am excited that he and I are partnering up on this, and just wait, soon we will have RED!!!

Have a good night!

Touring done economically, video style

I was recently contacted by a touring group called Hotel California, they are obviously an Eagles Tribute Band.



These guys are a successful touring band. Are they making millions of dollars? Living the rockstar lifestyle? Nope. What they are doing, is making a living, a good living I hope, but a living. They tour where and when they need to, they do fairs, casinos, concert venues, what ever will pay the bills.

So, these guys love what they do, check them at: www.hotelcal.com, and they are always looking to make their show better for their audience, but they don't have millions of dollars to have high priced video gear. So, that's when my specialty comes in, providing a high quality solution for an affordable price!



So here is our little rack, featuring the HDFrND 9500 gl from Electrosonic, Inc. This is a great machine that is designed for museum installations, not exactly the live event industry, but I have been able to take this great machine and bring it into our world. Being that I also co-own a post production company, we are able to edit and encode the content for this machine on site, so it helps. I have used this machine on over 20 live events, and it has been rock solid!

The 9500 is the middle machine in this rack, the other integral part of this unit is the Violet Audio Decoder, from Violet Audio. This is also a groovy little machine. It basically takes what ever in oudio wise and will put it out XLR. Which for a touring group, this has to be able to put out XLR.

This is the back side of this rack and as you can see, I am trying to keep this as simple as possible. You can see that there is a DVI output, VGA, RGBHV- BNC, and 6 channels of XLR outputs. Nice and simple!! On the left hand side, you can see the connector for the remote! One of the coolest part of this whole rack is the remote.

The band drew out a picture for a remote. They wanted something extremely simple to use, 4 buttons, no muss no fuss. So, to make this work, I talked to the experts!! Mr. Ian Scott from Electrosonic made this bad boy work for me, and for the band. And it is nice and small.

Just to show you the size, this is a standard 1 cup dixy cup!!

Just to finish up about this great project, I had about 9 days to design, build, and deliver this, so my office took a beating! Have a great day and enjoy a great laugh at what we've been cleaning up since Sunday.