Cornerstone AV Creates LED Cylinders to Support Therapeutic Oil Company’s Message
Young Living, a leader in the healthful essential oils market, held its International Grand Convention in downtown Salt Lake City June 21-25. Cornerstone AV was asked to create an inspirational and exciting production design inside the Vivint Smart Home Arena, home to the NBA’s Utah Jazz. While also incorporating dynamic lighting and projection mapping into the comprehensive stage design, the team at Cornerstone AV led by Chad Fraughton created four 360° LED video walls comprised of FLEXLite Plus 8.9mm LED video technology from Nashville-based PixelFLEX.
Hemispheres and Cylinders
“This was the ninth year we’ve worked with the team at the Young Living International Conference, and they have really experienced a lot of growth over time, with this year having approximately 17,000 attendees,” began Fraughton, Cornerstone AV’s vice president and executive producer. “In the production design, we needed to create an engaging environment that would allow them to most effectively communicate the story of their patented four-step Seed to Seal® process.
“To do this,” Fraughton continued, “we wanted to develop four hemispheres within the stage design that would also feature four 360° LED video cylinders above each hemisphere to create a very unique visual experience no matter where you were seated in the arena. We really challenged ourselves with creating dynamic visual elements within an environment that was thought-provoking and ‘wowed’ attendees from the moment they walked in, and the FLEXLite Plus LED video technology from PixelFLEX certainly helped us to that.”
Chosen for its high resolution and ability to curve 15° in any direction, FLEXLite Plus offers users a bright, dense display and high refresh rate, allowing it to look good in photographs and videos along with live events. Its tiles are calibrated directly out of the box to decrease failure, helping the product ensure the perfect color and brightness of any LED video design.
A 360° View
“In the beginning of the design process, the LED cylinders were really one of the first ideas we created,” continued Fraughton. “We wanted to use them for fluid visual transitions within the program and because of their seamless design and they gave us a lot of leverage to create a unique visual experience for the audience no matter where they were seated in the arena. The FLEXLite Plus cylinders ended up having a 20-foot outside diameter, and we flew them directly above the four outer sub-stages for a balanced look that complemented the overall size of the stage. With all of the lighting, video mapping, and LED video elements working in unison, it created a very powerful production design,” Fraughton added.
“When we first heard about the design concept that Cornerstone AV was developing for the Young Living International Conference, we were very excited about the opportunity to provide their LED video solution,” said David Venus, PixelFLEX’s director of marketing. “We knew the FLEXLite Plus 8.9mm would be perfect due to its high-resolution graphics, its brightness, and its 15° curving frame that could create the full 360° design desired.”
With the LED video gear selected, it was time to begin the load-in and setup for the week-long event. With a main stage that measured 32 by 64 feet and the four outer stages that measured 16 by 16 feet, the full production design was comparable to many of the largest touring productions today. Needing the complete production package to load-in quickly and easily, Fraughton knew there would not be time for errors during the LED video tech process.
An “Aggressive” Schedule
“We had an aggressive load-in schedule that didn’t allow a lot of time to rehearse,” said Fraughton. “We started loading-in at the arena at 6 a.m., and 72 hours later, we started our show. This gave us about 48 hours to completely install the entire design,” he added, crediting the FLEXLite Plus for its ease of installation. “It is packaged and deployed nicely and it installed easily,” he said. “As a rental company the installation and performance of a product really makes or breaks the success of the experience for us.”
“At PixelFLEX we are not only LED video manufacturers, but we are also production personnel. We understand completely the challenges that face a production crew onsite during load-in and tech,” Venus added, noting that ease-of-use features are an important part of PixelFLEX product designs.
Once the setup for the Young Living International Conference was complete, Cornerstone AV brought in 268 pieces of original content created by their team of video designers featuring Young Living’s products and their benefits. It was now time to program the LED video design and bring it all together with the lighting and video mapping elements as well.
“We had previously worked with the FLEXCurtain technology on the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour,” said Fraughton. “While there may be different LED companies out there, we find that their processing equipment may not be ready for what we need, but with PixelFLEX the processors are one of the strongest selling-points to their technology. To me, PixelFLEX has really spent the time and energy to focus on the brains as well as the display and that is the most important part.”
“When researching LED video technology, people often look at the resolution, panel size and hardware connections, but they forget to look at the brains behind the equipment,” added Venus. “With our line of LED processors and sending units powered by NovaStar, we are committed to creating less failure points for your LED video display and allowing you to experience greater effectiveness, unparalleled flexibility and easy switching of input sources.”
Event Highlights
Once the Young Living International Conference was underway, the production schedule inside was packed with an opening night performance by Recycled Percussion out of Las Vegas, keynote and motivational speakers and awards honoring Essential Oils partners. Then, on the final day of the conference, Young Living wanted to send the attendees off with closing concert by multi Grammy Award-winning, country trio Lady Antebellum.
“Currently out on their summer tour, Lady Antebellum arrived on site with full media server capabilities, so we used our Dante system and fiber backbone routing system to bring all their technical needs to front-of-house,” explained Fraughton. “From there, the lighting director was able to use Hippo media servers and the grandMA for control. When we first met with them, they were completely blown-away by the stage. Once they saw the complete design they actually requested to use our LED video for the performance, so we leveraged all the visual assets together and it made for a tremendous conference finale.”
“When we heard that Lady Antebellum was going to be the headlining performer on the closing night of the conference, we were very excited,” said Venus. “We have never had the opportunity to introduce our LED video to Lady Antebellum, and we knew once they saw the quality and creative possibilities of the FLEXLite Plus, they would love it. Their show looked absolutely phenomenal.”
As the Young Living International Conference drew to a close in Salt Lake City, Fraughton and his team at Cornerstone AV had a post conference meeting with the client. “They loved how the full production design completely submerged the audience into an environment that made it easy to learn and absorb all the information,” he said, noting that the 360° FLEXLite LED video cylinders played a key role in meeting that goal. “Everyone felt the conference was exciting, on-target and very upbeat, and it motivated the attendees to share the vision of the company.”
For more information about PixelFLEX, go to www.pixelflexled.com.
