Elite Multimedia Productions in Historic Charleston with the Goalen Group

For over 30 years, the Goalen Group has created a multitude of elegant and exciting client experiences for some of the world's top Fortune 500 companies. Reaching across a broad spectrum of multinational industries, their live event design team recently worked with a leading aerospace manufacturer hosting an awards ceremony to highlight and honor their annual achievements. Understanding both the high client expectations and the technical challenges associated with the event, the Goalen Group turned to the Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions for an impactful yet practical LED video and lighting design.

"This was an awards ceremony held in Charleston, South Carolina, and one of the challenges of working in a city with a lot of historically protected buildings is that you can have issues with rigging, power, and the logistics of the load-in," says Matthew Goalen, president and technical director, Goalen Group. "We were in an old art-deco style movie theatre that was converted to have a ballroom space, so we really wanted to play off the aesthetics of the venue. To do this, we needed to create a design to best accentuate the layout of the ballroom, but one that could also be ground-supported with low power requirements, and easy to install."

As the team began looking at the design possibilities for the space, Goalen knew that he wanted a dynamic visual background to highlight and energize the action onstage. Understanding the physical limitations of a historical location, he needed a sturdy and custom rigging system to keep it all in place.

"We wanted something that we could use as bright and vivid backdrop to the awards ceremony on stage, so we built a large cinemascope, curved LED wall that basically filled the room edge-to-edge," continues Goalen. "Since the room was only about 40' wide, we brought in ground-supported truss towers and Elite Multimedia Productions designed custom clamps which locked the truss to the back wall. Now not only was the wall supported by its base truss structure, but it also had a backbone structure that kept it from falling which kept everything and everyone safe."

With the LED video design ready to go, it was time to focus on the lighting for the event. In an evening filled with moments of both excitement and inspiration, it was essential that the fixtures chosen be able to provide an array of design options.

"We wanted the event to be colorful and fun, but also give us a very professional ambiance during the presentations and executive speeches," adds Goalen. "We needed a lighting design that could provide a variety of looks during the awards ceremony, so we like to use a lot of moving lights as it gives us the best variety of design possibilities without having to actually throw a lot of fixtures into the design. The nature of live events is that you can never predict what will happen, so being able to adjust the lighting on the fly is fundamental to this type of design."

Having both the LED video and lighting solutions now in place, the load-in for the awards ceremony could now begin. By utilizing the latest in LED technology for the majority of the production rig, the power challenges associated with a historic location soon became an issue of the past.

"Power can always be an issue and we only had a total of 100A for both for lighting and LED video," explains Goalen. "This was one of our main concerns going in, but luckily the entire LED wall only pulled only about 54A. The onsite engineers then gave us a simple 3-phase power-out off their main distribution which we tailed over to an Elite Multimedia distribution box that easily fed the wall and all of our other show equipment."

As the doors prepared to open and welcome in all of the evening's attendees and award recipients, the production design was ready to kick-off the night. In this high-energy and exciting environment with high client expectations, Goalen was thankful for the valued partnerships that would be on display behind the scenes.

"Elite Multimedia Productions brought in a great setup crew of talented LED video and lighting technicians, and they also did a great job of working with the local labor crew to make sure everything is done efficiently and on time," concludes Goalen. "They were there supporting us the entire time to make sure everything worked properly, and the value of having preferred vendors who know the level of client experience you are trying to deliver is extremely beneficial. Having done multiple shows with Elite Multimedia Productions, we have developed a very good relationship and their team always works with me step-by-step."