Creativity Essentials Series (Part 3): Simple and Brilliant Ways To Get Creative With Your A/V Experience!
When creating a memorable experience for attendees you want to create an emotional connection between them and your event’s mission. Light and color drive emotion, what better way to tap into that than with stage design and lighting that in totality, immerses attendees in your event. Through the use of lighting and stage design you can highlight the theme of your event, visually and emotionally stimulate attendees, and ensure that your event is a memorable, impactful, yet cost effective experience.
Get Creative With Your Stage Design
A vibrant, imaginative stage can set the tone for your entire event. Some 400 years ago Shakespeare used stage design to draw his audience in and rivet their attention to the story he was telling; still today, meeting professionals are using the same process to get attendees invested in their event.
Consider walking into a general session that consists of theater seating and a screen, yawn! Chances are you won’t be telling anyone about your experience when you feel like you’re back in a college lecture hall. There is no color, no texture, and no excitement to rouse any emotions; therefore, your brain, like your eyes, wanders to the more exciting landscape of your day dreams.
Now consider walking into a general session with a stage like the Grammy’s or a Cirque Du Soleil set. Before the event has even started you are impressed, probably taking pictures, and sure to talk about the event long after you leave. The vivid landscape may trigger a memory, draw out curiosity, or simply look captivating, and instantly you are engaged and ready to get involved in the event.
Let’s take stage design one step further, what if you could actually interact with the stage? Imagine the keynote speaker is discussing “life in the fast lane,” when suddenly a race car screeches to a halt inches away from him. Through projection mapping and interactive stage design, the stage can come to life, and create an illusion that makes a huge impact on attendees.
Stage design can be dynamic and cost effective.
Through creative solutions such as printed backdrop stretchy screens, interesting graphics, the lighting that allows for dynamism, and a company who can help you design an experience; you can provide attendees with an experience worthy of big-time award shows, without the big-time price tag.
Lighting Is Everything
In many ways your entire event depends on lighting. Without proper lighting your attendees won’t be able to see what’s happening on stage and will miss key points in the presentation. In stage design, the modular sets are manipulated to interact with the lighting, which optimize the emotions the stage set evokes in attendees.
I recently went to a show in a fairly barren venue, at first sight there was nothing visually intriguing and mentally, I checked out. However, when the main event started it was AMAZING! I was instantly drawn back in, and continued talking about how impressive it was hours after the event had ended.
The element that made the difference from boring to thrilling? The lighting.
This venue had rigged their lights to trusses that changed levels and colors in time with music, and projected images onto the surrounding walls. Additionally, there was up-lighting on every wall and pillar that changed colors along with the rigged lights. It felt as though I had stepped into a different world.
As mentioned in the Branding section of this series, GOBO lighting can customize the walls or floor of your venue space with the event or company logo, or a message. This particular event used two different designs; one with the event name- and another with the logo.
The lighting made the atmosphere exciting. In a matter of minutes the event went from boring and disengaging, to an experience I couldn’t stop talking about! Unless you plan on having your event in the dark, you have to use lighting anyway. Why not make the lighting dynamic, and use it as a cost effective solution to infusing creativity into your event?
From the moment you start planning an event, the ultimate goal is to have attendees walk away feeling more knowledgeable and connected to your topic; while lighting and stage design should not be the star of the show, when used inventively, they will highlight your event. With these two solutions, you are no longer discussing a rental; you are breathing life into your event through customization.
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