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Volume 4, Issue 11 — November 8, 2010
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The Most Horrifying Seven Minutes of My Life
By Joel Rollins, CTS-R There’s an old truism in business that the real test of a service provider is how they deal with problems or mistakes. I like this one — it lets me redefine all the times I've made stupid mistakes, and refer to them as “self tests.”
We work in a really interesting business where it comes to procedures when things go wrong. For instance, when things really go wrong, both our personnel and our clients are often dealing with it in front of an audience. Audience pressure, and peer pressure, can change everything. For one thing, there isn't the recommended time to reflect and let people calm down.
Let me give you an example, one that I keep buried way, way in the back of my mind and only let out when I haven't eaten anything heavy.
Many years ago, when I was working in Toronto, I took on the annual meeting of Canada's largest record store chain. The company’s CEO, a famous (or notorious) billionaire who is known for his activism, his record stores, and his signature airline, was going to speak. Not only was this a record store chain (at the time, even more exciting to work with than a computer company), they were a splashy one with a famously eccentric keynote speaker. Putting the fast-paced show together that would lead up to his appearance was actually FUN, working with a client who, for a change in a fairly conservative city like Toronto, wanted to pull out all the stops.
I should have seen it coming — but, like I said, this was exciting… One of those shows where the clients are fun, everybody is one big team, and everybody is getting a chance to really stretch. We were young, enthusiastic, energetic… and foolish.
I stretched a little too far.
There were a number of guest musical acts for short sets, punctuated by speeches from marketing execs and producers, all leading up to the grand entrance by their world-famous leader. Therein came the problem. Fanfare wasn't good enough for Mr. Jetset. We were working with a set that featured an enormous RP screen center stage, surrounded by red cubes (which was a feature of their logo). When he arrived, he decided the entrance wasn't splashy enough. I'm not sure if it was him, one of his entourage, or, God forbid, even me, who came up with the idea of him chainsawing his way through the screen from behind, backlit by enormous ACLs, to the tune of "Born To Be Wild."
To quote John Cameron Swayze, "It worked in rehearsal." We worked it all out overnight… building red cubes of plywood for him to step down from to the stage, getting the lighting and sound cues worked out, and even finding the best wireless microphone for a chainsaw. The screen would go brilliant white, leaving him a giant, backlit silhouette holding a chainsaw on screen. The chainsaw screamed, "Born to be Wild" played at painful volume, the lights went crazy, and he cut his way through the screen, stepped through onto the logo cubes, and walked out a long runway to the podium… as the stage lights went dark and four of us in blacks went out on stage as the song played and replaced the fabric on the screen frame. We charged them a lot of Canadian dollars for several screen fabrics to rehearse with. All was fine. Except that, in the excitement of the actual moment, he stepped onto the frame of the screen, bowing it badly.
I've never thought "Born to be Wild" was long enough, anyway. But that day, it was incredibly short. We were still on stage, trying mightily to stretch the fabric into place and re-shape the screen frame, when the lights came up and, without looking around, the star of "Toronto Chainsaw Massacre" began calling for his slides…
My first boss used to tell me that "we operate the show; we should never become PART of the show." and I really felt it that day. Especially as the client screamed at me in my brand-new wireless headset while my eyes tried to adjust to the stage lights being on me as I tried desperately to re-form the screen frame. What took less than the length of the song in rehearsal took almost seven agonizing minutes… while the client screamed and the big man began reading his speech with punctuations of, "gee, there's supposed to be a graph up there on screen," just for emphasis.
Those seven minutes took almost two years to recover from… and turned an adventurous client that spent a lot of money into a conservative, suspenders-and-belt client for a long, long time.
The moral of my story?
It's better not to HAVE to recover. You be the conservative one – no matter how it goes against the grain. Let the client go a little wild with your toys, if he is so inclined, but be there to reel him back in when necessary. Help him out (and, well, cover your assets) by rehearsing scenarios that include best case and… misadventures.
That is, if you ever want to be able to digest a heavy meal again.
rAVe Rental [and Staging] contributor Joel R. Rollins, CTS-R, is General Manager of Everett Hall Associates, Inc. and is well known throughout the professional AV industry for his contributions to industry training and his extensive background in AV rental, staging and installation. Joel can be reached at Joel can be reached at joelrollins@mac.com
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Dukane Shows Five-Pound 2700-Lumen Projector Listed at a price of only $745, the new Dukane 8789H is a light (5 lbs.), XGA resolution (1024×768), 3LCD projector that includes a lamp that’s spec’d at 4000 hours and garners 2700 lumens (but only 500:1 contrast ratio). It’s aimed at the low-cost education market, but a cheap, bright projector would be useful in any rental house.
If you want complete specs, go here: http://www.dukane.com/av/products/Item_dvProjectors.asp?Model=8789H
Whether a cheap projector is useful in a rental house, of course, depends on your market.. personally, I find a huge difference between “cheap” and “cost effective” depending on how often I can rent it, how much I can rent it for, how long it lasts, and what it costs to service.
–JRR Back to Top ViewSonic Shows New 52" and 42" LCDs Bragging about 700 nits brightness and claiming a 4000:1 contrast ratio, ViewSonic says its new native 1080p LCDs include a 178-degree viewing angle, slim bezels (19.5mm for the 52” CD5233 model and 16.3mm for the 42” CD4233 version) and can be tiled for video wall applications up to 5×5 – but they’re also about 5” deep. Both monitors are shipping now.
If you want complete specs on the 42”, go here: http://www.viewsonic.com/products/digital-signage/products/commercial-displays/cd4233.htm
If you want complete specs on the 52”, go here: http://www.viewsonic.com/products/digital-signage/products/commercial-displays/cd5233.htm
They ARE thicker than most, but the integrated handles and tiling capability (and Viewsonic’s price) may give them an edge in rentals — most of the new ultra-thin displays are hard to handle and fragile. Will be interested to see if the construction is “robust” enough to justify…
–JRR Back to Top
Click above for more information Christie Debuts 8,000-Lumen 1080p DLP Projector Last month, Christie launched the new leader in pro-grade single-chip 1080p projectors in the form of the DHD800. The native 1920×1080 is a one-chip DLP using TI's BrilliantColor 10-bit image processing and, in a first for a one-chip DLP at this price, Christie has added four-sided image blending and color matching.
Replacing the DHD700, Christie is aiming it for both large venue and HD meeting room applications since it has a series of long-throw and short-throw lenses and is specified at 7500:1 contrast ratio. Although not totally a GreenAV product, it does only use 23 watts of power in standby. Here are all the specs and details: http://www.christiedigital.com/AMEN/Products/ChristieDHD800.htm
It IS an impressive set of specs — and to add the edge blending and color matching at the price in a single-chip machine is nice, too… And, frankly, green is a little different in staging, since projectors don't usually spend days at a time in Standby mode — it’s power draw at full brightness, and how much juice I need to ask the house for, that really matter to me here, since for me, “Standby” would mostly be sitting inside a roadcase on a shelf… drawing zero watts.
–JRR Back to Top NEC To Debut Pro-Quality LED Backlit LCD Monitors In late Q1 2010, NEC Display Solutions will launch two new LCD public displays (46" and 55") in the NEC MultiSync X-series with LED backlights. The NEC MultiSync X461S and X551S will be equipped with professional public display panels with the brightness and reliability standards suitable for public display applications.
The LED backlighting allows for lower energy consumption and an extra slim monitor. The products will be lighter and use absolutely no environmentally hazardous substances such as mercury, which is in line with NEC’s "Green Vision" campaign.
In the press release, NEC Display Solutions says it has “…therefore decided to wait for these panels to become available instead of launching a commercial looking product with consumer quality.” That’s clearly a dig at other manufacturers who hope their high-end consumer products with LED backlights can climb into the pro public display arena (and probably explains why NEC is telling us now about 2011 plans).
No details online, yet, so we’ll have to wait for the official announcement.
Standing by for the announcement, I guess… but there is an important mention here. We all focus on “green” in terms of energy consumption, which is useful… but we sometimes fail to think about the fact that our model cycles are shorter and shorter. We throw away an enormous amount of toxic materials in our industry, of which a vanishingly small portion is ever really reclaimed or processed. I’ve actually started to pay attention to things like mercury content and other pollutants, too.
–JRR Back to Top Extron Intros ATSC and CableTV Tuner Finally — an RS232 controllable HD tuner for the rental and staging markets. Dubbed the AVT-200HD, Extron’s new off-air (and cable TV) HDTV tuner receives ATSC broadcast signals and delivers HDTV video simultaneously on HDMI, RGBHV, and YUV outputs. Designed for professional AV applications, the AVT 200HD includes Ethernet, RS-232, USB, and IR remote control capability. It outputs PCM stereo audio or Dolby Digital with simultaneous S/PDIF and analog balanced and unbalanced stereo outputs. The AVT 200HD also offers clear QAM cable TV decoding and standard definition video outputs.
Want complete specs? Go to: http://www.extron.com/company/article.aspx?id=avt200hdad
An excellent set of specs for both the installation and rental markets due to the flexibility of control… remembering, of course, that our use of broadcast tuners in staging is pretty infrequent due to public exhibition laws, which I know we all pay strict attention to.
–JRR Back to Top ADJ Releases 294-LED Array Wide-Beam Light Designed as a dance floor or event impressive light, ADJ’s Revo Burst literally uses 294 LEDs packed inside an 8 pound can (12”x8.5”x9.5”) to produce a clusters of colored light in a portable package that’s only $240. Claiming a 100,000-hour lamp life and pulling only 20 watts of power, the Revo Burst uses seven clusters of light (each with 42 lamps) — RGB and white — to throw light in nearly any direction and it also connects via XLR with up to 10 DMX channels for music synchronization.
Here’s an impressive video that shows you what the Burst can do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRo1JwMHJQE&feature=player_embedded#!
I TOLD YOU disco wasn’t dead…
–JRR Back to Top |
For all you REGULAR readers of rAVe Rental [and Staging] out there, hopefully you enjoyed another opinion-packed issue!
For those of you NEW to rAVe, you just read how we are — we are 100% opinionated. We not only report the news and new product stories of the rental and staging industry, but we stuff the articles full of our opinions — in this case, it’s industry-veteran Joel Rollins' opinions. That may include (but is not limited to) whether or not the product is even worth looking at, challenging the manufacturers on their specifications, calling a marketing-spec bluff and suggesting ways integrators market their products better. But, one thing is for sure, we are NOT a trade publication that gets paid for running editorial or product stories. Traditional trade publications get paid to run product stories — that’s why you see what you see in most of the pubs out there. We are different: we run what we want to run and NO ONE is going to pay us to write anything good (or bad).
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To send me feedback, don't reply to this newsletter — instead, write directly to me at gary@ravepubs.com or for editorial ideas: Editor-in-Chief Sara Abrons at sara@ravepubs.com
rAVe [Publications] has been around since 2003, when we launched our original newsletter, rAVe ProAV Edition. rAVe HomeAV Edition, co-published with CEDIA, launched in February, 2004. rAVe Rental [and Staging] launched in November 2007. rAVe Ed [Education] launched in May 2008. rAVe DS [Digital Signage] was launched in January of 2009.
To read more about my background, our team, and what we do, go to https://www.ravepubs.com Back to Top Copyright 2010 – rAVe [Publications] – All rights reserved – All rights reserved. For reprint policies, contact rAVe [Publications], 210 Old Barn Ln., Chapel Hill, NC 27517 – (919) 969-7501. Email: sara@ravepubs.com
rAVe Rental [and Staging] contains the opinions of the author only and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other persons or companies or its sponsors. |
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