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The speakers in Melbourne
In
one of the best hotels in Melbourne we set up an event where
the guests were invited for a cocktail party, a video presentation
and a trade show.
After
set up I asked for the video to be run and walked round the
room to see and hear the quality from various positions in
the room.
At
the back and the middle it was great. but in the front few
rows the sound quality dropped off to the point where the
words were indistinct even though the volume was still loud
enough.
The
speakers were hung from the roof where they were normally
positioned in the room and this proved to be the problem.
The front speakers were hung over the third row pointing to
the rear f the auditorium so the high frequency sounds were
not being received by those in the front 3 rows. The in house
sound people told me that nobody else complained and did not
have a method of fixing the problem. As the VIPs were sitting
in the front row we had to find a solution. In the end we
used the foldback speakers (normally used for a band to hear
themselves). We placed them under the screen facing forward
so the front rows could hear clearly.
The slide jam in London
Based
on the principle that whatever can go wrong may go wrong during
an event, backup procedures need to be put in place during
planning and set up to combat the problems as they arise.
A
presenter I staged a show for in London was using slides spread
across 3 screens to illustrate his talk.
On
the script I was given to change the slides there was only
a tick where the slides should be changed,there
was no indication on the script as to what slide went with
which words.
Luckily
I spent some time after rehearsals remarking the scripts so
at each point there was an indication of which slides should
be on the screen at which time. During the event a slide jammed.
Because of the extra work done marking up the script we were
able to unjam the slide and get the trays to the correct positions.
There
was no way we could have done that with just ticks on the
script.
The box at the cocktail party
It
was a very low key affair, Just a cocktail party, the chief
executive from the USA was there to meet the local staff and
clients. All we were asked to provide was a microphone for
the speeches. The music was to be provided by a guitarist
‘ who would not need any amplification. The area for
the guests to gather was small for the 100 or so invited.
When it came to speech time I lifted the loudspeakers onto
their stands (they would have looked out of place high up
as the guests arrived but nobody would have heard the speeches
if we had left them on the floor). What was now required was
a stage for the CEO to stand on to make his presentation but
nobody had ordered one so I made one out of road cases used
to bring in the sound system. As soon as he stood on ‘the
stage’ this low key affair became an event that impressed
the guests and made the management look good.
The wedding in Jerusalem
This
otherwise excellent event was ruined because the video lighting
was shining in the guests eyes for most of the event. If the
architect had built in hanging points for bright flood lights
and the venue management had set the lighting for ‘Record
on Video’ instead of candle lit intimate dinner, the
whole atmosphere could have been improved 100%
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