The AV Advantage, Part 5- Understanding Your AV Crew

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So who are all those people on the AV team at your show?

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Well, let's get into it. Welcome to the

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Event Pro show, your ultimate guide to the world of corporate events.

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Whether you're a corporate event planner, experiential marketing pro,

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producer, technician, or anyone involved in creating exceptional events,

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this podcast is your go to resource for valuable insights, expert

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tips and inspiring stories from the industry's leading professionals.

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Foreign

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thank you for joining us on the Event Pro Show. I am your host, Seth

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Macchi. I'm the CEO of lemg,

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an event production company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. We

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produce events all over the country and our primary clients

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are event planners, whether they are in large organizations or

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whether they're independent and they work for themselves.

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We provide AV services for corporate events and because

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of this we wanted to put together a five part series to help event

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planners work better with their AV partners.

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And you are joining us in part five of a series called the

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AV Advantage. If you missed parts one through four, don't worry. You

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can go to the eventproshow.com or wherever you get your

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podcasts and find those first four episodes,

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but I'm going to go through what they were. Episode one we talked about

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design, how you can design events better from an AV

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perspective. Episode two, we talked about how to

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make your budget go farther by using time

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as a budget saver as far as AV is concerned.

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Episode three talked about building better

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RFPs so that you can look at

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proposals kind of in more of an apples to apples comparison

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and hopefully save your team a lot of time.

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Episode 4 We went through what happens after the

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contracting. You know, like you contracted with an AV provider, you selected

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them, then what? And I walked you through what to expect

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and how that process works. The final episode I want

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to wrap up with the actual showtime. So what's going

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on behind the scenes? Maybe peek behind the curtain and

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talk about who that crew is on site. There's a lot of

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people wearing possibly, you know, black shirts. They're

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pretty quiet, you know, subdued. People behind the the

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drape or behind the screens doing things at glowing

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screens. What are those people doing? Well, I want to walk through that a little

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bit, but first let's talk what happens when you get your

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AV delivered to the venue. So first of all,

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loading dock, you know, you're dumping all the gear on the loading dock. That's what's

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happening on load in day and they're moving all that gear and to

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the ballroom or the venue. That process

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typically has an additional amount of crew. So what you'll have is

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you'll have the person leading the event. We call them a project manager.

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At lemg it could be a production manager with another

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company. But that type of a title, the

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technicians that are actually going to be operating the event, they're usually

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helping. And then we bring in an extra group of load in

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labor that can either be local

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IATSI stagehands, a local union, or

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it could be an independent company that provides that those type of services

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for event labor. So loading in and loading out and that's,

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that's just additional hands to help push all of that equipment into the

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space and get it set up as quickly as possible. And they

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usually go away after setup is done, that they've done their job and, and

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the technicians start doing all the detailed setup. And

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so from that point the room starts

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turning into the render or the design

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that was pitched to you during the sales process. And

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hopefully it looks exactly like what you were thinking. Once

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that's all set up. There's all sorts of people that you can see

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on your proposal. Like you see the names of their positions and.

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But when they're on site, you know who, who are these people? So let's talk

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about that. Typically you have two Z in a normal

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event you have front of house. Front of house is that area where you

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know, it can be draped off. There's a. Usually an audio console,

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maybe a lighting console. It's the most scene technical position.

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You even see them at concerts, they're out in the room with the

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audience. So that's the front of house area. Usually

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at that area, like I said, there's an audio engineer that would be your

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A1. They're actually taking all the signals into their

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audio console and they're mixing the show to sound good to

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everybody in the audience. Maybe everybody in the streaming world

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records. But they're making sure that everything comes together and sounds

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good. You typically have a lighting director

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or L1 out at front of house as well with a lighting

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console. Same thing. All those lights that are in the ceiling

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and on the ground, the. They are taking all of those elements

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and turning them into different looks that are appropriate for different

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sections of the event. And so you know, there might be a walk in

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look and then a show opener look and then a video roll

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look and then back to normal stage level look. And they're

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making sure that the lights look great. If there's recording, video

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recording, they make sure that the stage is evenly lit

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so that it looks great on camera. They're a very important component

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to, to the event as well. And often you

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have a td, a technical director out at front of house.

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Some people call them a show caller. There's different names for them, but

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they're often on comm. Every everybody on crew has calm. They can talk

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to each other and they're calling the show. So they're literally talking

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to everybody that has a role on the technical team

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and telling them what their job, what their next job is coming up.

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So, you know, get ready guys. We're going to do a video roll here and

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three, two, one, roll. Video lights down, audio, bring up

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video roll one or whatever. They're doing this on comm. You're not hearing

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as an attendee, but they're the one keeping the show moving

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forward on schedule according to the run of show document that

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you probably have created with them. If we go

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backstage, behind the curtain, behind the screens, there's usually a whole

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other area back there. And so backstage you have other

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additional video engineers. So. So some of those video

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engineers might be playing those videos off of computers.

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Another one might be dealing with just PowerPoint presentations from your

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executives to make sure that that's happening. You might

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have video engineers that are dealing with cameras and

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switching between cameras to make sure they look good and they the

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color is good on those cameras. You might have an additional person,

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a camera director, talking to camera operators in the room

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and telling them what type of shots that they want, who is actually al

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right now, those types of things. So that's your backstage

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crew. Additional crew back there might be an additional lighting,

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an Emmy or master electrician or an

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LED technician or two that help build the LED

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surface, the video surface. But are there just to manage, make sure

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things are working well. And there can be other various

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people backstage like an A2. What is an A2?

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Well, an A1 is out front mixing audio and. And A2.

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It's very important to a corporate events because

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often you have things like panels and different people are

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moving on and off the stage with microphones. Well, every one of those doesn't get

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a unique microphone to them and that that mic never gets used again.

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You're cycling microphones through different presenters

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on stage. So someone's back there micing them up, making sure it looks

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nice. So that's often a person that has good communication

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skills, able to kind of talk to everybody and get everything

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coordinated backstage. If you have a lot of movement

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in your run of show as far as people on and off a stage, you

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might consider a stage manager. And this position to me is the Most similar

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to a theatrical environment where they're making sure actors are going on

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and off at the right time. Well, the same thing with a complex

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corporate event. You would have a stage manager that is making sure that

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people are showing up at the right time. If you have green rooms

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for executives and guests to sit in there, going and getting them and

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make sure they're, they're positioned, ready to go on stage.

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These are some of the roles going on all

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over the room when you have a corporate event. And these are some of the

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roles that you know, when you see a proposal you, they're just like numbers and

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letters, you know, a 1v1 LED tech.

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But that's, that's what they're doing to, to make this whole show happen.

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These people are important to, to keep the show working.

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Another component though that I wanted to quickly talk about are

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rehearsals. If you're not utilizing rehearsals in your corporate

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events, you should very much consider doing so.

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Building in at least maybe a half day before

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to walk your executives through an event and get

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them prepared. Just the space, walking through,

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timing, where things are, what to expect.

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This can be the difference between a kind of sketchy

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show and one that's full of speakers with confidence. And it

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changes the whole atmosphere of the room when you do rehearsals.

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Well now who would lead that? Typically a technical director

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or a technical director and stage manager would work during a

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rehearsal period to walk people through either full

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rehearsals or just kind of a tech facts type

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of rehearsal. Where you're looking at, you have your presenters walk on

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stage, hear the mic turned on, look at where their presentations are going

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to be, kind of look where everybody is. What am I looking at? How does

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the clicker slide advancer work, those type of things. So one or

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the other, but it really can be something that makes

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or breaks an event. If you have a very complex,

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multi day show, I recommend a day or two of rehearsals before

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and a good technical director can walk through, have rehearsals

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scheduled for all components, all speaking components of a corporate event.

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It's very important to add that component if you're

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looking to smooth out how the actual execution

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of an event works. You know, the last thing I want to

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mention is what does flawless execution actually mean?

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Well, flawless execution, it doesn't mean perfection.

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We're in the live events business and so there will always be

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changes. Nothing is ever perfect, but our goal is always to get as

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close to perfect as we can. And I hope that

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the last five episodes gave you some

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tools and tricks tips to help you

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plan better events with your AV partner so that

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you can get as close to flawless execution as

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possible and keep growing. As an event professional, we at

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LEMG would love to be your AV provider. You can go to

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LEMG Live to check us out or you can always

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DM me on LinkedIn. I'm Seth Mail Macchi M A C C H

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I if you need to check out the previous episodes of

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the Event Pro show, you can go to theeventprochow.com

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or go to your favorite place to listen to podcasts. We put

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out a podcast every week. Every other week I'm I'm

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introducing you to a new guest that is somehow related

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to corporate events and in the alternate week I'm giving more detailed

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information about AV providers and instruction for event

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planners. Thank you for spending your time with us and we

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will see you on the next one.

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The Event Pro show is a production of LEMG video

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by Nick Barrett, audio and post production by Prince

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Thompson. You can learn more about us at LEMG

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Live.