You know, most of us travel, some of us I think shouldn't even have a home because of being on the road so much. (You know who you are!! Amy...) Well, this year I have been on the road a lot. I am currently sitting in a hotel lobby somewhere near Goshen, New York. We are about 70 miles north of New York City, I think, and my son is asleep up stairs. So as I sit down here working on two shows and my first trade show booth as an exhibitor, I have to sit back and wonder at the amazement of this year. I think this is my 4th or 5th trip across the US already, if I were to add up all my travel, it would be probably 2 months, possibly even three already, and I am going to be the opposite of Willie Nelson, I just can't wait to get home again!
Don't get me wrong, I have had some great trips and done amazing shows. I had the opportunity to do a spider show in Philly where I even created the backgrounds!! It was a great group of guys to work with, and a client that I enjoy working with!! (Hello Jimmy and Shain!!) I did a great tradeshow for Pentax in Vegas for 2 weeks, The 4 cities for Crest, Scottsdale, Baltimore, Dallas, and back to Philly, you have seen some of those photos, amazing gigs as well. Not to mention personal trips to Saint Louis, Northern Cal, and now Up State New York. all great trips, and I am sure I have missed something in there, but I am ready to stay home for a week or two.
Mike, who works for me when he is home, will now be on the road until basically Christmas so I guess I have no room to talk but I do miss my bed, my half finished porch!! look below for that photo. But, what are you gonna do, as my laptop is dying, I can only say, remember, traveling and hotels can get old too!! Below you will see a photo of me working on my deck as well as one of the things I did sitting in this hotel lobby, a little design!
So, there is this phenomenon that we all know about in our industry, it happens at the worst possible times, just when you think everything is working properly, and the client is there and the peak moment is uppon you, and BAM (To quote from that cooking guy) something goes wrong! The worst part about it is that you have no idea what caused it, no idea why it happened then, and you look like an idiot, but hopefully, you can fix it!
Ok, now lets get into what made me think of this today. As I was getting off a plane flying home from my show in Philly, where I had plenty of ghosts, and I have 5 voice mails and multiple emails from the people who hired me to do the install for the Lakers saying there was a problem. Let me start by telling you a little about this install. If you had the chance to watch the NBA finals last year, and saw the announcing of the teams, then you saw this. Well, just befor every Lakers home game, We drop a 30 foot tall, 90 foot round kabuki drop and I project on it in the round.
This is little clip of how it looks.
This now being the end of our second season, I have had a sense of dread that something was bound to go wrong. By this time last season, I had computer crashing for no reason, I had a network card go out in one of my projectors, so I had no control over it, and of course, we were then, like we are now, in the Western Conference Semi Finals. So what happened today?? Scott, the guy who encodes and installs the media, went in today and one of the preview monitors did not work, and a second one said no input!!
Last season, I was pulling out computers, checking fiber, all sorts of fun annoying things, this season though, I think I got off easy. See, what makes the warp work is this little thing called Image Anyplace, formally made by a company called Silicon Optics, now made by Flexible Pictures Systems. See this box is awesome for these sorts of installs. This box makes the warping possible, no matter what type of input I put in, it blends, etc. So I like this box, I have installed them in several places, as well as used them on tv shows, and corporate events. Very handy. But today THE GHOST.....
So, some how the input got changed and the warping got turned off, nothing hard to turn back on, just the fact that after 2 years, 1 of the 4 boxes installed did this, of course the day I am flying home at the end of this tour, and the day before game 7! Fun fun fun. The great part, 15 minutes to fix and do 3 trial runs to make sure there will be no issues for tomorrows game.
I have included a couple of pictures of how this all looks, as well as a picture of my man Mike Wawro running the game.
Ah DVI, How much fun it is!!! So I am in Philly, having fun with unions, and doing a great show for what has become a great client We were brought in to do this tour, and everything is a true 1920 X 1080, our specialty! We have great hi-def projectors, switchers, some new fiber boxes for getting the signal around, all seems to be perfect...
So, here's the deal, this client brought us brand new Mac 2009's in Dallas and well, they now have the joy of HDCP. The Barco DCS switcher, which I LOVE!!!!, is HDCP compliant and well lets face it, no real good 10,000 lumen HD Projector has HDCP in it, Barco has it for the HD 18 and HD 35, but it is in a card, not built in. But like I said, nothing in the 10,000 lumen range, which is where most shows are. So, when I go to preview the Mac's, it blacks out everything on the screen, because it is not supposed to put video through, so it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Well, me being me, and having my relentless team with me, we strive to find a way to fix it!! And we did!!!! Here's the deal, find some old Gefen DVI da's (And I do mean the older ones) and well, you can trick them. You must know that I am a big fan of Gefen, I have put their equipment in the Staples Center for the Lakers, I have used their equipment on countless trade shows and corporate meetings, I own lots of their DVI to fiber and Cat 6, so I am a true believer. But, here's the problem, you have to find their older stuff sometimes to make everything work! And so by using an older DVI DA, we were able to make the Mac think it was seeing a monitor which is HDCP Compliant, and then put the signal into our switcher!! Everything works great and it looks fantastic!! The picture below is a back stage look of control with our 16 foot by 9 foot screen, and some great lighting we did!! I will add more photos soon about this event.
So, on a final note, welcome to my blog, the Don't Wonder Productions Blog. I will strive to keep updating and keep telling the stories of the smaller AV companies, but the ones who do great, hi-end affordable events! We specialize in making sure our clients events run smoothly, look fantastic, and come in on budget. You will see new photos and posts soon, as long as I am able! Thanks for saying HI!!
