Transformations and Dramatic Statements 
Last Minute Requests to Event Lighting Design Plans Don’t Scare Us
January 24, 2011
As lighting designers, we know how to evoke an appropriate mood, reinforce the style of the event design and highlight visual elements into a unified environment. Working closely with your event designer, florist or event planner, we begin the design process by listening to the event vision and overall goals before sharing ideas on how light can be used to enhance the vision. In fact, the earlier we get involved in the event design the better the collaboration is in achieving the client’s desired “look” for the event. But sometimes, as all creative or visual art professionals know, all the pre-planning in meetings, in computer-generated renderings or on paper isn’t the end of the design process. Invariably, last minute requests for changes or additions to the lighting design occur during the installation of the event. Most people are “show me’s” and can’t visualize how we can create effects to match or highlight the space, mood or action. And, frankly, very often the lighting designers see something on the job site that inspires an addition, change or logistical adaptation. We happen to love these kinds of last-minute “shoot from the gut” challenges because our ability to adapt on the fly generally separates us from the rest of the pack.
For instance, for a wedding at Winterthur Estate in Delaware our client, Evantine Design, collaborated with us for months on an outdoor celebration around the Reflection Pool. The lighting design would incorporate lighting the entire party area, from 65 foot trees around the perimeter to shrubbery, fountains, architectural statues, walkways, stairs and of course, dinner tables, a stage and dance floor. All was set and in place when a dramatic summer storm meant changing plans completely and moving the wedding inside the adjacent museum. Not only was the new party space rather clinical, with stone facades and walls of glass at either end, it required working with restricted conditions for attachment and installation timeframes. [Photo of the event space just before we began installation]
Our goals were simple: unify the entire room and ceiling with textural light using multiple gobos in layers of pink, lavender and magenta; highlight the stunning floral décor on dinner tables; wash the band and dance floor with photo-friendly hues of amber and pink; and let the rest fade into darkness.
As we were working through the details in the installation, Evantine asked us to light up the incredible columns surrounding the entrance area to the space. We were more than happy to use our new LED uplights at the base of the columns. This simple request turned out to be one of the more memorable design elements of the wedding.
Seen from the outside, who would know all this happened in a matter of hours.
[Photos courtesy of Laura Novak]
CATEGORY: Design Ideas, Our Stage This Weekend, Weddings
Eventions Productions Releases New LED Lighting Solution
October 07, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Eventions Releases New LED Event Lighting Solution
Philadelphia, PA - October 7, 2010
Eventions Productions, a top Philadelphia event production company, announces the release of their newest lighting fixture – The LED12. It was shown for the first time at an event at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The LED12 is revolutionary in that it is the first LED fixture that has a perfectly neutral white light. In the past, LED fixtures attempted to create white light by using a combination of red, blue and green bulbs. It was impossible to create truly white light by using this method.
The LED12 features 12 three watt white LEDs in a custom designed enclosure that holds the light fixture and a battery, enabling the fixture to operate for over 10 hrs on a single charge. The LED12 also has a snap in gel frame to allow lighting designers to color it any color as well as multiple frosted and clear lenses to alter the shape of the beam.
“The LED12 has a tremendous number of advantages for the special event market,” exclaims Eventions’ President, Brian Toner. The fact that we can light an entire event using no electricity from the venue nor any cables that would need to be hidden or taped down allows us to light spaces and events that were either impossible or prohibitvely expensive before. For example, at the event we did a few nights ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we uplit 28 columns, the stairs and food stations in less than 20 minutes of setup. The client loved the quick turnaround, decreased labor needed and the complete absence of cabling.”
Photographers and Videographers will also greatly apprecriate the fact that the lights are perfectly uniform in color and do not appear to strobe as most LED lights do when filmed by video cameras.
Decorators, florists and event planners in the Philadelphia region who have seen the LED12’s in action are immediately impressed with their capabilities and have been reserving them for many upcoming events. “With decreased budgets and clients being cautious of where they spend money, as well as the fact that the labor to install these fixtures is about 1/10 of a traditional uplight, we see a huge market for the LED 12’s,” says Toner.
The fixture was created by the team at Eventions over a six month period. The LED12’s utilize cutting edge battery technology and charging systems. The fixtures feature LED Bulbs utilizing state of the art optical collimators, which allow the light to be focused into a tight beam much like a light house lens does.
Eventions has completed the first run of 48 fixtures and expects to eventually replace all of its uplighting with the new technology within a few months. Shown below are the fixtures in their custom designed travel cases with built-in charging systems.
About the event: On Wednesday, September 29th, The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Office of Special Events and Stephen STARR Events, hosted an open house for the area’s top event professionals. Event decor was provided by Table Art and photography was provided by Marie Labbancz.
About Eventions Productions: Eventions Productions is special event production company serving the greater Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Annapolis and Washington D.C. markets. Eventions provides special event and corporate lighting design, sound and audio support, video and media projection, scenic design, power generation and staging. Eventions provides these services for the wedding, bar and bat mitzvah, special event, college, social and society events as well as the general public.
Contact:
Brian Toner
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.eventionsproductions.com
610.485.5900
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CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Business Partners, Community, Corporate, Design Ideas, Industry News, Innovations, What We Love
Phasion Phest
October 01, 2010
Just wanted to share a quick snap shot of Phasion Phest this week. Eventions provided lighting design and video screens for Philadelphia’s premier fall fashion event. The event took place on 12th street under the Convention Center
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Community, Our Stage This Weekend, What We're Up To
Muscle Cars and a Hot Rod Sound System!
September 16, 2010
On Saturday, September 11th, Eventions helped local DJ and entertainment company Silver Sound With a monsterous sound system for the American Muscle Car Show at the Phoenixville Fire House and grounds. The event was to raise money for the troops serving in our armed forces. Over 400 American muscle cars were in attendance, mostly Mustangs of all ages and types. There were also many manufacturers, distributors and after market parts companies in attendance.
Silver Sound Director of Special Events, Paul Evans, who actually DJ’d and Emcee’d the event, wanted to ensure he could be heard clearly over the entire show which covered the area of approximately 8 football fields. Our audio designers, using satellite imagery of the space, specified a JBL line array sound system utilizing over 24 speaker cabinets and over 25,000 watts of power.
Satellite imagery and computer modeling of the sound system are used by our engineers to guarantee flawless audio!
Here is the feedback from our satisfied Client:
“Everything went very well! Your techs are always a pleasure, they know what they are doing, they are supportive and they take care of the clients even when they throw curve balls. The President of the company really appreciated Andrew taking care of his needing a microphone to plug into a remote system they had over by the dyna. No one told us about that.
I Thank you for providing me with a great end to end solution, for helping me to design the system for the proper coverage, the result of our work impressed the people attending. As Director of Special Events, I really enjoy learning how to configure, deliver and set these things up. The Genie’s were very cool the line arrays and subs sounded great the near field speakers were very strong and smooth”.
The Line array’s being set up on the ground.
DJ Paul Evan’s State of the art Laptop base DJ rig.
Photo Credits: www.silversound.com
CATEGORY: Business Partners, Community, Our Stage This Weekend
Playing With Light
July 07, 2010
A few months ago I was talking to Beka Rendell and Kimberly Fink of Innove Events about doing an out of the box night time photo shoot using a lot of lighting. We have done quite a few events at Andalusia, an amazing estate on the Delaware River. The events were always in a tent by the river but the estate has many other spectacular areas that beg for some great lighting. In fact there is this amazing abandoned walled grapery that would be incredible for a wedding or a chic party. If you’re looking for a location that has never had an event in it, we already have the lighting design worked out for the grapery!!!
An A-list team was formed to play around one night and see what we could come up with. The always amazing Marie Labbancz offered to capture the magic. Beka and Kimberly organized everything and Kathy from Table Art provided the gorgeous flowers. Claudia Seyler worked her magic on the models hair and makeup.
The shoot was divided between day and night time shots. The day locations are being submitted to national publications and will be shown in the future, but I did want to show you a quick glimpse of some of the night shots. The team used the mausoleum on the property as inspiration for a Twilight / True Blood look. A little fog and some dramatic lighting really made the look!
This wall,which is over 100 years old and located in the grapery, is over 25 feet tall. The pictures capture how some simple lighting can bring out the texture and architecture of a space. A little variation in color can make an image look vastly different.
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Design Ideas, For Fun, What We're Up To
Fashion On The Parkway
May 17, 2010
On Saturday, May 15th, 2010, Eventions Productions provided full technical production for Moore College’s Annual Senior Fashion Show. This is the 2nd year we have worked with Moore to do the show in a huge tent on the lawn in front of the Franklin Institute and Logan Square in Philadelphia. The tent is used for the Fashion Show on Saturday night and then re-purposed for their graduation ceremony on Sunday morning.
Eventions provided a thunderous sound system for the show, which featured a live DJ spinning the music for the show that rivals Fashion Week in New York City. Large projection screens were installed for live images as well as slides showing the designer’s collection information. Since this is a show to showcase the work of the fashion students, the models are professional runway models from Philadelphia and New York. The fashions shown are the culmination of the student’s 4 years of study at the college. The invitation only show is attended by local and national press as well as representatives from most of the major fashion labels.
A lighting design consisting of runway lighting and intelligent lighting allowed our designers to change the look of the tent and runway for each collection.
Disclaimer - For the technically inclined people looking at this, the video screens were correctly color balanced, it is my amateur photography skills that are showing wrong colors - Brian
CATEGORY: Community, Our Stage This Weekend
Next Posts Previous Posts
Craig Sumsky: (09.16.10 - 2:36 pm) Wow, that sure is one state of the art system. Who is Paul Evans?