Science of the Show Part I
by Jim Fuller
Published in Midwest Meetings Magazine
The staging of a meeting takes on different connotations, depending on the role you play in it. To the corporate meeting planner, it's a responsibility that could well determine the next raise or promotion. To the production house, it's an art - time to pull out the stops and deliver the most creativity possible for the client's dollar. To the audiovisual company, it's a science - the science of the show.
The basic elements of the science are sound, projection and lighting. Each of these elements plays a key part in the primary purpose of the meeting - the conveyance of information. Each must be designed to meet the needs of both the audience and the room.
Sound
Any major meeting needs sound enhancement for presenters, music, videos, entertainment, etc. The larger the audience or room, the more sound enhancement required. In designing sound systems, the goal is to make the audio volume and quality even and equal throughout the room.
In a convention center hall or hotel ballroom, sound systems ideally begin with clusters of large speakers hung high and out of the way above either side of the stage. In wide venues, fill speakers at the front of the stage are needed to assure that the area in the center near the stage isn't sound dead.
Placing speakers only in the front of these large, deep rooms creates two potential problems: 1) the people in the front will be blasted while the people in the back strain to hear and/or 2) you'll get feedback. So a bank of Delay speakers is often hung in the center of the room to deliver sound to the back half of the room. It is critical that the delay between the speakers be accurately calculated to a microsecond to avoid echo effects.
With the quality of sound equipment available today, audio is playing a growing role in delivering the message. Surround sound, formerly available only in movie theaters and sophisticated home theaters, is becoming common in Business Theater.
Projection
Projection is used to visually reinforce spoken words and present videotaped elements. With recent advances in technology and the creativity of the people involved in producing graphics and visuals, these elements can be designed in many additional ways that contribute to the impact and retention of information. Here again, it is important that the system design take the room and the audience into consideration.
In a meeting room with relatively low ceiling heights, smaller screens may be added to the sides of the main screen. In high-ceiling venues, screens can be hung from the ceiling to improve visibility. When the screens are at the front of the room, text and graphics must be designed for whole-room visibility.
Even with large 12'xl6' screens on or above the stage, the image on them fills only inches of the total view of the people at the back of the room. So we often recommend hanging an additional bank of screens halfway back in the room. This effectively brings seats in the rear of the house "closer to the action" onscreen. I recently sat in the back row of a meeting room we designed this way, and I felt like I had the best seat in the house.
Another element we often recommend for large rooms is image magnification or "I-mag". With I-mag, cameras capture close-up images of the presenters or the action on stage or in the room, and these images are projected on the screen. Suddenly the CEO at the podium, instead of appearing the size of Thumbelina, takes on mythic proportions.
Multiple screens allow you to route different information to different screens for different impact. For example, while the CEO is speaking, his image may fill the main screens while the corporate logo holds on side screens. When the marketing staff is speaking, their images may appear on side screens while their charts and graphs fill the main screen. When new products or new TV spots are presented, they can appear on all screens.
Lighting
It is important that the audiovisual company have total control of the lighting in the room not only for visual purposes, but also for technical reasons. You have to have the proper amount and type of light on the podium to illuminate presenters for both the audience and the camera that's trained on them. You need to control podium lights, stage washes, and moving lights - and do it without interfering with any images that are being projected. And you need to control the house lights for safety.
Lighting dimmers can create an audible hum when connected to a common electrical source with the audio system. For this reason, we make sure all lighting draws from one power distribution circuit and all audio and video draw from another, so there's no interference.
In future issues, we'll look at enhancements to the basic elements of sound, projection, and lighting, including teleprompters, and integrated, computerized system, as well as ways that pre-engineering can improve meeting, staging, and reduce labor costs as we continue to explore the science of the show.