Transformations and Dramatic Statements 
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
Philadelphia Mural Arts Wall Ball
May 12, 2010
The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program asked Eventions to Help with the annual fundraiser event, the Wall Ball. The Wall Ball was attended by over 350 people at the Loews Hotel in Philadelphia. The Mural Arts Program’s mission is to engage in art education and community public art collaborations, and to increase public access to art. Since the Mural Arts Program began, they have produced over 2,800 murals and educated over 20,000 under-served youth in neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.
About two weeks before the event, The director of Special Events for Mural Arts called the office and said “I have this crazy idea. Can we hang one of our real murals up for the Wall Ball.” When we got down to the specifics of it, it was a monstrous project. The mural, currently in 30 different panels, was installed in the Galleria Mall in Philadelphia. The overall size of the mural was 30 foot tall by 120 foot long. That’s a BIG mural.
Here are some pictures of the mural as installed at the Galleria.
The murals are painted on a canvas type of material on multiple panels and then installed at the mural site like wall paper. This particular mural was painted by over 15 different artists at different times.
After some careful measurements of the Millennium Ballroom at the Loews, we figured out a way to make it happen. Now down to the logistics… there was a previous event booked in the ballroom until 3:00 PM that day and the wall ball began at 5:30 PM. Could we install the rigging and make it happen in such a short time? OF COURSE! Our lighting designers specified a lighting plan to make the mural POP. We also provided a dual screen projection system for their presentation in another ballroom and two separate sound systems for the event. But the main attraction was the mural.
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Community, Innovations, Our Stage This Weekend, What We're Up To
The Fray at Villanova University
April 26, 2010
On Friday, April 23rd, Eventions provided sound, lighting and staging for the spring concert at Villanova University with headliner, The Fray. The concert was attended by close to 3000 students and featured Steel Train as the opening act.
The Fray’s most famous song is “How To Save A life” which is the theme song from the hit TV show, Grays Anatomy.
The concert featured a 40X40 Stage, a 26 speaker line array sound system, 100 feet of lighting truss with 126 stage lights. Complementing the conventional lights were 16 Martin moving head intelligent lights and a host of special effect lights.
While we have worked with many nationally touring artists, it is always fun to see the requests the bands make as well as the logistics that nationally touring acts have to deal with. The Fray traveled with two 52’ tractor trailers loaded with their equipment, merchandise for sale and supplies. They actually had a Yamaha baby grand piano that they lug around with them. I thought it was amusing that at least 6 different crew members asked me what state they were in!
The band travels in the lap of luxury in three tour buses with High Definition satellite TV, full kitchens and luxurious sleeping accommodations rivaling most hotels. But life on the road is tough. The Fray was in Boston the night before and was traveling overnight back into upstate New York. When they woke up, they had a 1.5 hour yoga session right in the back of the gym and then went on a quick tour of Philadelphia seeking out vintage record shops to satisfy one of the members obsession with rare vintage LPs
Special thanks to our friend Kevin York for some of these great images.
The great sounding D&B line array system.
The Fray timelapse - Eventions from Brian Toner on Vimeo.
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Our Stage This Weekend, What We're Up To
Pilot - The Finished Product
April 07, 2010
Here are some shots of the finished set. We are ready for the client to come tomorrow morning to checkout all of our hard work.
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Corporate, Our Stage This Weekend, Pilot
Pilot - Load in Day
April 06, 2010
We arrived on-site at the Gaylord National Hotel today to begin the load-in of the set, audio, video and lighting. Below are some pictures of the set-up. There were a ton of pre-production CAD drawings and very specific measurements made to ensure that the lighting truss was going to fit in front of the chandeliers. We were working off of blue prints that the hotel provided of the ballroom. When we got there and began installation, it was discovered that the drawings were WRONG. The Chandeliers were not where they were supposed to be. It took about a half hour of on the site engineering to come up with a solution. As the truss was being raised into position, we had to attach ropes to both the truss and the chandelier and pull them apart from each other to make everything fit. As you can see from some of the pictures, the three chandeliers, while magnificent looking, were constantly in the way of our production.
Thank goodness the hotel had plenty of hallways we could use for storage… 45 road cases take up a lot of space
CATEGORY: Behind the Scenes, Corporate, Our Stage This Weekend, Pilot , What We're Up To
Oscar Party with VOA and Channel 6
March 08, 2010
Eventions teamed up with the Volunteers of America, Channel 6 WPVI and the staff at the Loews Hotel to produce Philadelphia’s only officially sanctioned telecast of the Oscars. The Volunteers of America shelter homeless people and help them find permanent housing. They also help people struggling with behavioral health issues or development disabilities and they help ex-offenders re-enter their communities, reconcile with their families, and resume their working lives. This event is their major fundraiser for the year and turned to Eventions Productions to jazz up the presentation and make this year different.
We listened to the client’s goals of making the stage and production more of a “show” They were bored of the two screens and a podium they have been doing for years. We designed a stage set incorporating two HD (High Definition) video screens to allow us to take a direct HD feed from Channel 6 and display it in crystal clarity. We also suggested a stage set with multiple plasma monitors to display sponsor logos. We originally had the idea of getting two huge Oscar statues to flank the podium, but learned that the Oscar image is a copyrighted image and cannot be used without authority from the Oscars. ( I Wonder how many other “props and décor pieces” that are used in events are copyrighted and people don’t ever think about it) We then came up the idea of having these cool statues we have seen at events magically hold the plasmas. A quick call to a friend at a prop shop and some careful engineering and we had our “floating TVs,” a sexy lucite podium and some intelligent lighting and we had a great looking presentation for the client.
The client gave us the technical requirements for their entertainment. Little did we know they were female impersonators. Cher, Liza, Tina Turner and Prince put on an amazing show and got the crowd on their feet from the second they walked in the door.
VOA arranged for about 50 Papparazzi to greet the guests as they came off of the elevators onto the red carpet. A Channel 6 on-air personality interviewed people for broadcast back to the national ABC network feed.
CATEGORY: Community, Corporate, Innovations, Our Stage This Weekend
Next Posts
