LAS VEGAS — Corporate extravaganzas may be less extravagant these days, but people still enjoy a good party. The creative challenge for the party-givers is to do just as much — or more — with less. “Clients today are faced with many challenges, especially having smaller budgets and, frequently, fewer hands to produce more work,” said Chris Drury, president and chief creative officer of Drury Event Group (DEG), a division of Drury Design Dynamics.
For Pulse 2009, a three-day technology conference for IBM and its business partners that took place at the MGM Grand Hotel, DEG relied on Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design (UVLD) to light up the conference’s special events while still being mindful of the budget.
“We designed a lighting system for the general session and added LED fixtures to highlight the décor elements of the party,” said UVLD lighting designer Greg Cohen of the concluding celebration attended by close to 4,000 guests. “Because we understood what was needed to light each portion of the event, we were able to repurpose the same moving lights that were already part of the rig,” Cohen added.
Getting the same space to multi-task was another way of keeping a lid on overall costs, and lighting played a key role in shifting the overall mood from serious to celebratory.
DEG “used many of the same assets from the general session for the party — video on two big screens and IMAG on two, the moving lights and Mbox /MIDI production system,” noted Jill Drury, CEO of Drury Design Dynamic. “We needed to turn the conference space into a party space, so we eliminated all of the seats in favor of a giant dance floor,” she added. “This created a rock club feel in a giant arena. We added different banners, configured 20 lounge areas and big bars, and installed skyboxes. But the main components were the same for both events — what differed was the look and feel.
“With large AirStar balloons with printed graphics and furniture that glowed from imbedded LEDs, the space had the feel of a club when the cover band and Smash Mouth performed,” she continued. “It was really important that the second the attendees entered the arena it was a different place. Greg’s lighting communicated immediately that this was something different: It was time to unbutton the top of your shirt and relax — this was not business as usual.”
Chris Drury added that a synchronized vision between event planners and lighting providers is another way to keep costs down, and he noted the “synergy of working with Greg and his UVLD team. We were in sync from the very beginning.”
He added that he regards any project “as a canvas, and the ways in which we get our vision onto that canvas is almost always mixed — lighting layered with various forms of video. We look at it all early, with the entire team, before spending any money so we have a clear plan.
“Greg knows what we’re trying to achieve, and how much budget we have to achieve it before he sits down to design. That way there’s no retrofitting. Since we partner on a lot of projects, there’s a real shorthand between us. We work very efficiently together to paint a picture in an integrated way.”
The lighting equipment was provided by 4 Wall Entertainment. Chris Nye served as production electrician with Dave Haar as his assistant. Cameron Yeary was the programmer and visual media developer for UVLD, with David Rees serving as the event lighting designer.
For more information, please visit www.uvld.com.
