Ahhhhhh, spring, when a boy’s thoughts turn to… events!
In the last four weeks, I’ve seen successes and debacles across a variety of events and venues, and this rant may be a way to get it out of my head, while giving you some food for thought.
First off, if your event is so important, why is the overriding concern the upfront cost of being seen and heard? These aren’t negotiating points: “I want to be half seen!” just doesn’t often come up much. No, these are the building blocks of your event. My favorite is still this question: “We have an iconic recording artist donating his time to our event, why do we have to pay $50 for a stage monitor so he can hear himself during his performance?” If you feel you need to ask that question, perhaps you should ask yourself, “Do we really need important donors to feel respected and appreciated at our event?”
The Oversell
If your event is important, why did you think overselling the seating or arranging tables on three sides of a stage was a great idea when you didn’t want to pay for three sides of lighting or audio coverage? But just think this through. If I’m going to put someone on stage, the single best place for an audience is right in front so we can communicate and connect most easily. From a technical standpoint, this means that sound just has to go straight ahead from the stage to the audience in one simple waveform. Ditto with lighting the stage — while my lampy friends will talk about depth of field and whatnot, for basic straight-ahead communication, we just need some good light coming from in front of the stage.
Take that same stage and stretch tables out 60 feet on either side, and you’ve got a really wide angle to cover. This means lighting from those angles, so that when keynote speakers turn to look at their audience in the corners, they are not covered in gruesome zombie shadows. If we add video support on either side of that stage, it can become difficult to see through the stacks of el cheapo speakers that have been piled nine feet tall in front of the screens, ruining the visual effect for a significant portion of the audience.
About that speaker stack, too…. Why? No one in their right mind would pile those things in a big Left/Right configuration anymore. But that vendor was cheaper by $150 or $200, you say? Let’s pretend you were at one of the tables immediately in front of those stacks. How long would you stay there? The volume can’t be turned down much, because the speakers need to push sound past you to get to the other 360 people behind you. But you were placed up front to enjoy the show because you’re a major supporter of the organization, and you… just… left.
The Venue
Let’s talk about venues. Ever been in a concert hall? The acoustics are great, the walls are covered with sumptuous fabrics that absorb and reflect sound “just so.” The sightlines are carefully thought out so that the audience can see the entire stage and screen. The whole point of a well-made theater is to connect audiences to the subject matter at hand.
So why, when we walk into nearly every venue in our fair city, is it impossible to have a conversation with each other from a distance of more than 12 feet because the acoustics are so awful? If you walk into a room and clap your hands, it sounds like an audience bouncing off every flat surface. And the chandeliers hang down to obstruct almost every view of the room. When was the last time you invited 400 people over to a hotel to admire their choice of industrial chandeliers?
Little Things Left Unsaid…
The venue may have told you they can handle 1,200 people, but that was standing room for a cocktail party — not for our guests seated to be educated and entertained. There’s no green room, because the other side of the hotel is rented out to someone else. I forgot to mention there’s another event in the room until 4 p.m. and our guests arrive at 6 p.m. Or that the rental contract calls for the girl who sits in the office to work an eight-hour day… surely no one in show business works longer than that to build a major event! And the custom positioning of the screens necessitates finding a way to suspend a projector 12 feet from the nearest beam. Sure, we can do that — once the chairs are down, we can just move them again so we’re ready for the rehearsal that the emcee figures she doesn’t have to show up for.
But I’ve digressed. I started with the idea that the best-laid plans often hinge on unexpected challenges. Early in the day, my job is to figure out those challenges that could nudge the event off the precipice. But some things are wild cards. The emcee who gets nervous and sounds like Fran Drescher — can I get you a glass of wine? The committee who suddenly realizes that its exotic theme music is only four minutes long, and they want us to find more just like it… right now! iTunes, don’t fail me now. The volunteer who decides that the best way to get peoples’ attention is to flip off the room’s main breaker (breakers are just lights, right?) and knocks out $50,000 worth of electronic equipment. Thank you, surge protection. The list is endless…
Over the past few weeks, as we kick into the busiest time of year, the real joy for me has been working with people who actually visualize their event, who write out a plan and think it through — the same people who talk about their event with care and passion. I’m happy to go to those meetings and hear the little pieces come to life.
Sorry about the rant, but thanks for listening. I feel better now.
Author Clint Kaster operates Smart Tech Audio Visual, a Portland-based company offering technical event production for nonprofit and charitable organizations. He can be reached at Clint@SmartTechAV.com.
