Ghosts in the machines......

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.