Outside Looking In - a vendor perspective on event production for internal production teams
In Spring 2023, I had the opportunity to present at the University of California Video Producers Conference. This annual event brings together video and production professionals from all over the University of California System to share resources, reconnect with colleagues, and inspire each other with new ideas. As a founding member of this group, I was asked to come back as a featured guest speaker and present to an audience of my former colleagues with an outside perspective on the work we share.
AV With Pride - Recap of Davis Pride 2022
As June comes to a close, I know we all have a lot on our minds, but I wanted to take a moment to look back and celebrate as we wrap up Pride Month. I know many large cities just celebrated their Pride festivals this past weekend. Here's a look back to a couple of weeks ago when Talon Audio Visual helped celebrate pride in Davis, CA. As an LGBTQIA-owned live events business, Talon Audio Visual has been proud to be the production partner for Davis Pride since 2015, and I look forward to many more years of a successful and growing festival. Hope you enjoy this look back at Davis Pride 2022. This video is #captioned
Thanks to Jolie Media for the great sizzle reel.
Video Description: A colorful review of the Davis Pride festival, this video opens with footage of the AV team setting up speakers and equipment and then transitions to colorful footage of the performers and audience at the festival. The video ends with Tim, dressed in black, speaking directly to the camera.
2021 - Year In Review
Wow. What a year. 2021 was quite journey, and I'm so thankful for the production partners, freelancers, and vendors who worked tirelessly this year to get productions off the ground.
And I am especially thankful to the clients who came to my little corner of the production world and shared my vision of what virtual and hybrid events could be.
Virtual and Hybrid Events Recap
Have you wondered what we've been up to for the past 18+ Months? Making Virtual + Hybrid Events! Here's a sampling of some of Talon Audio Visual's Virtual and Hybrid Event Work.
Not Quite Live Stream: A Virtual Event Video Playback Solution
I got a call this week from a client asking “how do we do an event that looks like a live stream, but is actually pre-recorded?”
Lots of the virtual events I’ve been working on have had pre-recorded sessions, if not been fully pre recorded, so I thought I’d share how I’ve been handling playback for Zoom calls or Live Streams.
Signal Flow Diagram of a typical virtual event playback solution
I got a call this week from a client asking “How do we do an event that looks like a live stream, but is actually pre-recorded?”
Lots of the virtual events I’ve been working on have had pre-recorded sessions, if not been fully pre recorded, so I thought I’d share how I’ve been handling playback for Zoom calls or Live Streams. For my higher profile events I use an ATEM Mini as an A/B switch for my redundant playback machines as well as for USB capture, but you could easily use a single playback machine and a capture card like a Magewell, a U-Tap or an UltraStudio to ingest the HDMI input into your streaming computer, and/or go directly into an encoder like a Teradek Cube to go live to stream.
Using Figure53 qLab for playback, I set “wall clock” triggers to play certain files at certain times based on the time-of-day, and then once it’s set, it’s easy to manage multiple breakout rooms at once with minimal manual input.
Reach out if you need help putting together a live event broadcast system (or if you’d like Talon to turnkey your production). Happy to provide a consult, additional assistance, or a full-service production.
Tim Kerbavaz is the Technical Director of Talon Entertainment Audio Visual.
Talon Entertainment Audio Visual provides event AV production services for private, corporate, and community events across the United States. Serving a wide range of events, from political round-tables, to Silicon Valley Tech Company Conferences, to community festivals, to automotive-industry board meetings, Talon AV provides expertise and an exemplary attendee experience.
Presenting the Class of 2020 (Virtually)
I got a phone call in March from a long-time-client - can you make our graduation virtual?
When Da Vinci approached me to reimagine their graduation as an online event, I knew their event needed more than a pre-recorded video or a teleconference link. Working with school administrators and district officials, we got permission to build a studio in a classroom and broadcast their event live from the high school campus. Over June 10th and 11th, we transformed the media classroom into a studio with pipe and drape, lighting, a few lecterns, two vans full of video equipment, and 4 technicians: Technical Director, Graphics Operator, Robo Camera Operator, and Producer/Show Caller, all all positioned to preserve safe social distancing.
I got a phone call in March from a long-time-client - can you make our graduation virtual?
Talon has been producing the live, in-person graduations for Da Vinci Charter Academy for a number of years, and they, like schools all over the world, were struggling to conceive of what a virtual graduation would look like. Da Vinci is a small charter school that emphasizes values of inclusivity, diversity, and student-driven collaboration. Their graduation ceremony features student MCs, awards, and each student’s “15 seconds of fame” - a 15 second video made by the graduate about their time at the high school, followed by live remarks about each student by a teacher whose classes they took.
The set, with Pipe & Drape Backdrop, Socially Distant Lecterns, robo cams, and lights visible.
When Da Vinci approached me to reimagine their graduation as an online event, I knew their event needed more than a pre-recorded video or a teleconference link. Working with school administrators and district officials, we got permission to build a studio in a classroom and broadcast their event live from the high school campus. Over June 10th and 11th, we transformed the media classroom into a studio with pipe and drape, lighting, a few lecterns, two vans full of video equipment, and 4 technicians: Technical Director, Graphics Operator, Robo Camera Operator, and Producer/Show Caller, all all positioned to preserve safe social distancing.
The resulting production was a live multi-camera broadcast with both student-produced and Talon-created assets. The show opened with a live to camera gag between the principal and vice principal at socially-distant (6’ apart) lecterns, followed by a student-produced video featuring the Student MCs, a capstone video, and childhood photos of the graduates. Talon provided formatting guidance and stock music sourcing, but it was student-created from start to finish. The goal of this segment was to feature the work, talents, and creativity of the graduating class and to allow the student team to honor their classmates. The student video then led into Talon-produced live segments including an awards ceremony, and the giving of diplomas, which honored each student by showing their 15 seconds of fame video and then displaying their name and graduation photo in a Picture-In-Picture format while a teacher spoke about their time at the school.
To produce the graduate graphics, speaker lower thirds, and award graphics, the Talon graphics team used an automatic form-fill process that linked a folder of images provided by the school administration with a spreadsheet of student names, awards, and speaker titles. This allowed for last-minute changes, and made onsite script changes easy to accommodate.
We used school-provided internet access, getting approval and dedicated network connectivity for our equipment and permission to bypass school network restrictions and firewalls. We also provided a cellular network backup, so that we could keep streaming even if the network were to fail.
Monitoring the livestream while calling cues, with video village and the set visible beyond the computer monitor.
Live chat, moderated by the technology teacher at the school, provided a way for students and families to interact in real time, and cheer each other on.
Post-event, the video was made available to parents to watch online and to download as a keepsake.
The event went very smoothly, and we were able to accommodate onsite and mid-show changes easily. We had some last-minute content changes during rehearsal that were easily accommodated by the graphics workflow. The biggest lessons learned for me were twofold - allowing ample pre production time and a full day of setup allowed us to adequately prepare equipment and content, and using a flexible, adaptable graphics workflow allowed us to make onsite changes to graphics, graduate photos, and lower thirds without the need to re-render or individually edit assets.
It was an honor to help DaVinci Charter Academy conceive and execute a socially distant program to honor the hard work and dedication of their students and families. With a great team and flexible systems we were able to roll with last-minute and during-show changes, broadcast live to a remote audience, and provide families with a memento when they couldn’t come to an in-person celebration. Special thanks to our friends at Argus HD who provided equipment and staffing support and to DaVinci Charter Academy and the Davis Joint Unified School District for trusting us to produce their event.
Recording of Da Vinci High Graduation 2020
Author Tim Kerbavaz, in mask, pausing for a selfie between cues while producing the graduation.
Tim Kerbavaz is the Technical Director of Talon Entertainment Audio Visual.
Talon Entertainment Audio Visual provides event AV production services for private, corporate, and community events across the United States. Serving a wide range of events, from political round-tables, to Silicon Valley Tech Company Conferences, to community festivals, to automotive-industry board meetings, Talon AV provides expertise and an exemplary attendee experience.
2021 : An Events Odyssey
“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine.” -Governor Newsom of California, April 14, 2020
"Large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least 1 year... It's difficult to imagine us getting together in the thousands anytime soon, so I think we should be prepared for that this year," -Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles, April 15, 2020
This is about what I was expecting, but for those of us who make our living in events, it means we’re likely out of work until mid 2021 or beyond.
I’ve honestly been expecting that timeline for a while now, so while it’s devastating news, it’s at least somewhat validating to have more official certainty on that point.
Our industry is extremely adaptable, extremely flexible, and extremely nimble. Show business will still exist now and in the future - there are too many of us addicted to the craft for it to disappear. Online productions will fill the gaps, creative technologies and solutions will be more and more common, and communication, education, and entertainment will continue.
“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine.” -Governor Newsom of California, April 14, 2020
"Large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least 1 year... It's difficult to imagine us getting together in the thousands anytime soon, so I think we should be prepared for that this year," -Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles, April 15, 2020
This is about what I was expecting, but for those of us who make our living in events, it means we’re likely out of work until mid 2021 or beyond.
I’ve honestly been expecting that timeline for a while now, so while it’s devastating news, it’s at least somewhat validating to have more official certainty on that point.
Our industry is extremely adaptable, extremely flexible, and extremely nimble. Show business will still exist now and in the future - there are too many of us addicted to the craft for it to disappear. Online productions will fill the gaps, creative technologies and solutions will be more and more common, and communication, education, and entertainment will continue.
But the kind of events we have had for the past few years in what was a growing and booming events market aren’t coming back for a long time. Many of our friends and colleagues will not be able to hold out for a year or more for events to come back, and will move on to other industries. I expect the integration market to boom as companies enhance telecommunications solutions, and I expect the broadcast sector to grow as more and more goes online. And I think many of our colleagues will leave production entirely for other different fields.
I am not optimistic about the viability of the live event production industry over the next few years. I think we have a lot working against us and I believe many production companies, big and small will be casualties of this pandemic.
I am however extremely optimistic about the futures of the people in this industry - my friends, my colleagues and myself because I know that we are as adaptable, innovative, and gritty as any industry out there. I am optimistic many of us will find opportunities in new production and AV market segments, and that those folks who move to greener pastures in other industries will flourish, bringing the skills they honed on the show site to new sectors.
I love event production and I want nothing more than to see the curtain rise again. I love the work and the stress and the exhilaration of that first “g-o”. I love the final cue and the curtain drop and that last slam of the last truck and the feeling of exhaustion and satisfaction of watching the show roll away. I love my colleagues and friends and brothers and sisters on the crew, who work tirelessly from load in to load out to make possible the closest thing I know to magic. And someday soon we’ll all have that again.
Until then, to all my production friends, I love you and miss you - please reach out. We’re all lonely and confused and need each other more than ever. Share with me - I want to hear your celebrations and your pains and the skills you want to learn and how you are celebrating your little successes in this time. Let’s share opportunities for work and jobs in and out of production that we can use to keep afloat or re build our careers. If folks leave the industry let’s leave room for then to re join us when we’re back in action and for those building opportunities elsewhere let’s build bridges to bring our production colleagues along with us.
Events are as close to magic as anything I have ever experienced, and that magic isn’t going away. The show will go on, and we’ll be there to make it possible. Until then, let’s please remember our community and build each other up. We all need a hand.
Tim Kerbavaz is the Technical Director of Talon Entertainment Audio Visual.
Talon Entertainment Audio Visual provides event AV production services for private, corporate, and community events across the United States. Serving a wide range of events, from political round-tables, to Silicon Valley Tech Company Conferences, to community festivals, to automotive-industry board meetings, Talon AV provides expertise and an exemplary attendee experience.
Header Image Credit: Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash
Live from Quarantine - The New Normal of Live Events
Live Events are changing and we’d better keep up
Watching The iHeart Living Room Concert for America presented by FOX on Sunday evening, I was struck with the overwhelming sense that this is the “new normal.” This is what a live event looks like now, at least in the immediate future.
Clients have been calling me all week, assessing how to put traditionally in-person events like galas and graduations online. As an events professional, my job is to bring the expertise, technology, and teams to execute my client’s vision, whether that’s projection mapping an abandoned cement factory, holding a benefit concert in a downtown intersection, or figuring out how to hold a graduation or a gala fully online. Events bring people together over shared goals and shared connections, teach and share knowledge, reinforce social bonds, and build communities. The challenge now is how to convey to an online audience the messages and emotional impacts we experience live and in-person. This is the problem I hear over and over again among my peers, friends, and even competitors as our whole industry grapples with connecting services to our communities during COVID-19. How do we continue to educate, inspire, and bring joy to our audiences in this time of social distancing?
Live Events are changing and we’d better keep up
March 30, 2020 - Tim Kerbavaz, Talon Entertainment Audio Visual
(Published under the same title on LinkedIn Pulse)
Watching The iHeart Living Room Concert for America presented by FOX on Sunday evening, I was struck with the overwhelming sense that this is the “new normal.” This is what a live event looks like now, at least in the immediate future.
Clients have been calling me all week, assessing how to put traditionally in-person events like galas and graduations online. As an events professional, my job is to bring the expertise, technology, and teams to execute my client’s vision, whether that’s projection mapping an abandoned cement factory, holding a benefit concert in a downtown intersection, or figuring out how to hold a graduation or a gala fully online. Events bring people together over shared goals and shared connections, teach and share knowledge, reinforce social bonds, and build communities. The challenge now is how to convey to an online audience the messages and emotional impacts we experience live and in-person. This is the problem I hear over and over again among my peers, friends, and even competitors as our whole industry grapples with connecting services to our communities during COVID-19. How do we continue to educate, inspire, and bring joy to our audiences in this time of social distancing?
Virtual Events 2020 - Combining ENG with Cell Phones
The iHeart/Fox “concert” was effectively a telethon, soliciting donations for both Feeding America and the First Responders Children’s Foundation. Combining ENG-style recordings of artists performing in their homes and studios with phone camera cameos and into-the-lens host segments, the program tugged at heartstrings and brought joy and levity into living rooms across America with a relatively low-tech, but very earnest and touching format.
The broadcast was a concert in the sense that it was mostly performances of music, and it was a TV show in that it was video-based and aired on a major network. But it wasn’t pretending to be an in-person concert or a traditional TV broadcast. It was well produced, but didn’t hide the fact that much of the show was essentially home movies recorded on cell phones. It used that raw edge to remind the viewer at home that these famous performers are sheltering in place just as the rest of us are; we’re all in this together.
Event planners and clients need remote events that convey message and emotion, but that don’t mask the unprecedented nature of this current moment - COVID-19 has changed how we interact, and as event professionals we need to honor and acknowledge that.
Key Takeaways
These are some of my key take-aways from Sunday night’s program, which I think are important to taking other high-profile events online:
Engineer your event like a TV news broadcast with remote/satellite contributors.
Pre-record as much as possible to avoid connection issues with remote sites. Ideally cut the whole show Live-to-Tape, or edit offline and roll as a package. The iHeart show was not broadcast truly live, yours doesn’t need to be either.
Showcase segments from contributor’s and host’s homes.
Use broadcast cameras and equipment for key segments (hosts, live performances) whenever possible. Use cell phone videos for short shout-outs and cameos.
Avoid vertical video for longer segments, when possible. For a short shout-out or cameo, your talent will record vertically even if you tell them not to. Roll with it - it provides a level of raw “homemade” intimacy to your broadcast.
For live segments, use broadcast codecs whenever possible. If you must use consumer technologies, use “TV Magic” to make the audience experience better. (See Elton John’s “video call” with Lizzo from the iHeart broadcast.)
Don’t pretend this is a traditional in-person event broadcast; make sure to remind viewers that your talent is also sheltering-in-place.
Encourage live social media engagement, reply to comments and tweets in real time, and showcase live social engagement on the broadcast to encourage social sharing and interaction.
By embracing the raw, intimate nature of phone video and video chat, and adding just enough broadcast polish to make it easy to watch, iHeart and Fox have established a formula for a virtual event that really works. This is a formula that I expect to see replicated more and more as event planners everywhere grapple with how to take an event online. I know my clients were all watching tonight, and I look forward to the many phone calls scheduled for this week as I help my clients build on this model to make the rest of this events season happen.
A friend of mine always says that the adage “The show must go on” is a misnomer. Audiences continue to crave interaction, education and entertainment, and we continue to provide it. The show WILL go on, and we’re just keeping up.
To all my friends in production, stay strong. We’ll see the other side of this, and while our industry will be different, the show will go on. Until then, stay home, and keep streaming.
Tim Kerbavaz is the Technical Director of Talon Entertainment Audio Visual.
Talon AV provides event AV production services for private, corporate, and community events across the United States. Serving a wide range of events, from political round-tables, to Silicon Valley Tech Company Conferences, to community festivals, to automotive-industry board meetings, Talon Entertainment Audio Visual provides expertise and an exemplary attendee experience.
Death by Dongles
If you give presentations regularly, chances are you’ve had a video adapter mishap more than once.
Perhaps you worry as you head to a new venue: Does the room have the right video connection for my laptop? With so many devices and so many competing connection standards, can you be sure you’re prepared and have the correct adapter before you present?
Here are a few suggestions for making sure you have the correct adapter for the job and some ideas for organizing your adapters.
Managing Video Adapter Woes
If you give presentations regularly, chances are you’ve had a video adapter mishap more than once.
Perhaps you worry as you head to a new venue: Does the room have the right video connection for my laptop? How many dongles do I really need to carry around to give my presentation?
With so many devices and so many competing connection standards, can you be sure you’re prepared and have the correct adapter before you present?
We support lots of presentations here at Talon Entertainment Audio Visual, and we have amassed a pretty large collection of video adapters. Here are a few suggestions for making sure you have the correct adapter for the job at every event, as well as some ideas for organizing your adapters, no matter how large your collection may be.
What adapters do I need?
If your computer has both HDMI and VGA built in, you probably don’t need to carry any adapters, as you’ll pretty much find one or both at any venue you visit. That said, most new macs and many smaller PC laptops, ultrabooks and tablets will need an adapter - they use smaller connectors to save space. You’ll encounter USB-C and Mini DisplayPort the most these days (USB-C has become a fairly common standard, certainly by 2019 we’ve been seeing it on a broad swath of computers) but we still see Mini DisplayPort, Full Size DisplayPort, and Mini and Micro HDMI a fair bit.
If your computer has built-in HDMI, you might consider adding an HDMI-to-VGA adapter to your laptop bag. I know it seems VGA is on its last legs, but we still encounter it a lot, particularly in smaller conference breakouts or older venues. We’ve had good luck with this one from Cable Matters, which has an audio output and the ability to get power over USB if your HDMI port doesn’t supply enough power. Hopefully as 2020 approaches we’ll see VGA less and less, but we always have a couple of VGA adapters, because it shows up.
USB-C to HDMI Adapter
Many new laptops have USB-C. Make sure when you buy an adapter that it supports your specific computer make and model. Different hardware makers implement the standard slightly differently (The same connector can be used for USB, Thunderbolt, and DisplayPort signals, so you have to make sure your computer and the adapter can communicate in the same language.) I’ve had good luck with this model for VGA and this model for HDMI.
Mini Display Port Combination Adapter - VGA and HDMI
If you have Mini Display Port on your computer, you probably want to get adapters to both HDMI and VGA. Some manufacturers make combo adapters that have both HDMI and VGA out. Keep in mind that you can only use one of the outputs at a time (either VGA or HDMI but not both at once), but it still saves carrying two separate adapters - I like this one, and have carried it with my 13” Macbook Pro for a few years.
HDMI Connector Types
If you have an ultrabook or tablet, you might have Mini HDMI or Micro HDMI. If you have those, make sure you carry an adapter - these are not super common and venues might not have the correct adapter on site.
For Mini or Micro HDMI connectors, you can get an adapter that has a short cable between the Mini HDMI and the full-sized HDMI ports, like this for Mini HDMI and this for Micro HDMI, or you can get a one-piece adapter like this. Either way, be very careful that the HDMI cable and adapter combination are supported from below—do not put strain on you computer or tablet’s Mini or Micro HDMI port—these connections are very delicate, and you don’t want to damage your device with a heavy cable pulling on the port
Where do I keep my adapters?
At Talon AV, we have so many adapters that we keep them in a large clear tackle box, but likely you don’t need to carry that many on a daily basis.
For a daily carry, I like to use zipper bank deposit bags like this. They are small enough to fit easily in a laptop bag or backpack, but easily hold several video adapters, USB Cables, and a phone charger or two. I carry one in my backpack with all my most-used accessories so that I’m always prepared.
Do you have other ideas for using or storing video adapters? Let us know!