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.

The Rest of the Industry

So, I am siting here, back stage, in the dark, at the Gaylord Texan doing a medium sized medical show. I was called by my buddy Shane to run his Spyder. Now, I am a Barco guy, I teach the screen pro 2 and the Encore, I love those products and I think they are amazing to work with, but Shane thought the Spyder was a better decision to buy, which I can understand, so I learned it as well.

Now, to explain what these two units do, I have a couple of pictures.

What these two pictures are are old encore shows. The top one was a show that I was brought in to do the encore design, engineering, and operating by my great partners at ShowPro (www.showpro.net). What this picture is is a blended two projector screen in the middle, 20 X 60, with 4 outside 16X9 screens, all controlled seperately, so I can put what ever the client wants on each screen. This had 4 Encore Processors on it.

The second picture was a show I was brought in to help design and to do the encore work with and it is a single 30X80 3 projector blend. Both of these are typical types of events done with encores or spyders.

So, onto today and also the title of this blog, "the rest of the industry" which could also be called the medium size shows. I love reading the magazines that show great photos from the huge shows, with unlimited budgets. Mike, who works for us when he's home, is currently on tour with The Fray doing a massive LED wall, really cool!!! But what about the true bread and butter of our industry, the medium sized shows. I have already shown some photos from these types of shows. If you read my May 14th Blog "Ahh HDCP how you take years off my life" you would know what I am talking about because it is that type of show, or like the show I am on here. These are what I am really talking about, smaller budgets but still have to look and sound great and make sure that the attendees think it is a huge show.


This is a picture of what I am currently doing, and what I am talking about. The three screens, because I am using the spyder, I can control each screen individually, even though the side screens do stay the same.

This is what the Spyder or Encore can do. This is the same center screen but with the joy of PIP (Picture in picture)! The client wanted to be able to put the presentations on the screen as well as an IMag (Image Magnification) picture, with a picture of the Dallas skyline behind them. The best way to do this is the Spyder or the Encore and can still be affordable.

This is a picture of what my control looks like for this show. Because of the budget, I am running the show from my laptop. A great way of looking at how you can make a show look great, with not the biggest, unlimited budgets.

Now, if you do have a big budget,




You can always make this your video control area!!

So in closing, I am showing a meeting that we did last year for Best Buy, this is another great example of the medium size show, the true bread and butter of our industry.

Our first Trade Show

So, what does Don't Wonder Productions do when we finally decide to exhibit in a trade show??

Well



That should show what we do!! I got together with David Corwin of Megavision Arts (www.megavisionarts.com) and we decided to have the best booth at this years BizBash Los Angeles.

BizBash LA this year was at LA Mart. which is a cool place but left us with some interesting options. David and I walked in and we saw our spot:



Our wall is 17 feet wide by 14 feet tall and we want to fill it with video. If you look to the top of the phtot, you will see track lighting, and an AC duct, but we want to fill the entire wall, top to bottom! There is only 1 real solution that will work for us and it is this amazing program my friend and mentor Paul Carrey with Marketing Specialists (www.marketingspecialists.com) brought to life for me, Scalable Display Technologies (scalabledisplay.com). Our solution was to put the projectors on the ground and point them up. The real problem was that we didn't want to put them straight in front, we wanted it to be clear in front for people walking up. So, we put them to the sides! This created a whole new problem!

How Scalable works is that you hook a computer up and hook a camera up to it as well, then you point the projectors where they need to be and have Scalable do the math to blend it all. Admitedly we had a problem or two...



and once we got past this, we had to make sure only certain parts were projecting so it didn't confuse the camera...



This was fun, really it was, but once we got past this issue, we got some great images:




This was the final test pattern and I was extremely happy!!! So, I am going to finish this blog with a couple of photos of our glorius event. If you have any questions, give us a call and let us know how we can help you.

Don't Wonder Productions 562-997-7289

It's 12:30 in the morning, is your truck loaded??

You know, I love my job, I really do. It's all I know really, but I feel that I am pretty freakin good at it, and I hope others do as well. But tonight is one of those nights that makes it hard to be a small business owner!

I have an event that loads in down in San Diego tomorrow morning (Will post pictures when I get down there). It is for my friends over at TLC. We are providing the video and sound for an outdoor party for the owners and managers of Panda Express! Kind of crazy... But, it is outdoors, on the water, which means, extra work! I have a couple of B-10 LED trailers comming down for video, I am using the new VRX line array from JBL provided by my friend Scott over at Broadcast Support, and I even get to play with wireless cameras! All in all, it will be a fun gig, but tonight, tonight I had to load the truck :(

One of the joys of being a small business owner is that there are times when everybody else is busy and you can't afford to hire somebody, so you get the job of picking up all the subrentals, loading all the gear, making sure there is plenty of drinks and snacks, etc. all by your self! And today, that was me. I have a 16 foot bobtail as well as my 10 foot trailer all packed full, ready to drive, and except for about 30 minutes of help from my buddy Matt, I did it all.

Really the hardest part is that I am prepping for BizBash on Thursday as well. Not only do I get to keep everything in order for San Diego but on Thursday, I Andrew Poley, and Don't Wonder Productions, am exhibiting in my first tradeshow! Scares the hell out of me to be honest. I think that is the hardest part of today, I am leaving for two days and when I return, I load it in, and I do not feel ready at all!!!!! This is a big step for me, I am excited and scared and anxious all at the same time. We are showing off Don't Wonder Post as well, so that is exciting (More to come on that later as well), just a crazy experience! Needless to say, it will be a very long week!

Well, being that it is now a quarter to 1 and I have to be on the road by 6 AM, I guess I should get some sleep. I will post pictures soon from both events!

The Road...( I am not Willy Nelson thats for sure)

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!