LMG, Inc. recently worked with production company AVMG to deliver the 2006 RiteAid annual conference. Held at the Anaheim Convention Center, the meeting was themed “Success Is in Your Hands.”
“We began with the conceptual design working with Corporate Magic,” explains Tom Miller, account services manager with AVMG. “They suggested running graphics seamlessly down both sides of the stage and asked us if their concept was possible. We turned to LMG to make it happen.”
To make the design work, two vertical, skateboard-style ramps were used on the left and right. Each vertical structure, measuring 90' per side, comprised five screens. The ramps were capped by a horizontal marquee, and a sphere was suspended below the marquee. The set was created to keep audience members in close proximity to the presenters.
“This was a unique opportunity for us because we had 10 projectors stacked vertically in two stacks of five. That had never been done before,” says Neil Morrison, LMG's video services manager. “Two additional, double-stacked projectors projected onto the sphere and marquee. Medialon was our first choice for controlling the environment. It was the only system able to control all the equipment we needed, including 12 Analog Way boxes. We could use the Medialon interface to do all the Analog Way software programming.”
Gear used to accomplish the design included Digital Projection 12,000 DSX+ HIGHlite projectors; a Christie Digital S12 Roadie projector; a high-resolution switching package, including Analog Way Di-VentiX DVX8022 seamless switchers; Medialon Manager Software; a Grass Valley Turbo iDDR; a Pinnacle Systems PDS9000 digital switcher control panel; Sony DXC-D30WS cameras, BVW-65 Beta SP recorders, BVW-2800 Beta SP Recorders, and a DSR-1800 DVCam player/recorder; and shuttle computers used to generate the content from Watchout.
Images could go up the side of one ramp's screens, travel across the marquee, and go back down the other side of the ramp. Graphics on the left vertical panel represented where RiteAid had been, and the right side represented where the company plans to go. Visuals included complex background elements from Dataton Watchout, I-Mag feeds, PowerPoint graphics, and original video content. Sources included 37 computers, eight cameras, and five tape decks. The show featured scores of programmed cues, many of them multiple and simultaneous.
“We needed the concept to work, and we needed it to work in budget,” says Miller. “In theory, we could have done vertical edge-blended LEDs, but we were able to do this for a quarter of the budget.”