WE Day: London -- Dazzling but never DazzledMaking the audience the focus of attention turns the usual aspect of arena events on its head, but then there was nothing "usual" about WE Day at the SSE Arena, Wembley on March 9. WE Day is an inspirational event, fusing the energy and enthusiasm of young people -- in the words of the organizations' website -- "to empower a new generation to shift the world from 'me' to 'we' -- from a focus on the individual to the power of the community." And its that audience focus which immediately validates such noble sentiments as Jason McKinnon, who designs the event in collaboration with executive producer Lina Beaudin explained. "It is a pretty amazing event. The audience can't buy tickets; they earn their way into the arena by taking action on social issues that are important to them." To put that in context, the young people that attended earned their place through participating in WE Schools and taking action: for example, collecting food for the homeless, or raising money to build schools and classrooms overseas for children less fortunate than themselves. "What these young people have achieved through WE Day has attracted an amazing talent roster," continued McKinnon. "In the four years I've been designing for it we've had, ex-President Gorbachev, Jennifer Lopez, and His Royal Highness Prince Harry. Today at Wembley it was Rita Ora who presented, Labrinth, Nico & Vince, and the Britain's Got Talent winners Revelation Avenue. Speakers included actor Clive Owen and professor Brian Cox OBE. It is a very diverse show from that perspective and every show is different." The WE Day events are streamed to web, that mixture of live concert pop stars interwoven with inspirational speakers producing their own unusual demands upon the tools of presentation. "While Lina applies her skills to balancing that mix of music and motivation, my concerns are focused around the output of the video and the lighting," was McKinnon's no-nonsense appraisal. "To start with, the show needs a mask, something that will conceal the change-overs between acts which are fast and frequent. So for Wembley we had a curved screen flying in and out. That was a dynamic effect and looked good. Overall there is a huge video content with several pre-taped pieces to roll into the show, so we have to have enough 16:9 video surfaces that can be seen throughout the venue. All of that was supplied by Video Design, Alex Leinster's team providing all our LED video surfaces plus a six camera production pack. Good video is important, there's simply not enough time to build a stage set for the show, and it wouldn't make sense economically, so creatively Lina and I design the show and rely on video elements to dress the stage and make it grand and dramatic in equal measure." That of course, presents its own challenges. "It has to be bright and bold because this is a high energy show for young people. But if it is bright enough for the audience it can sometimes be too bright for the presenters to work with comfortably. That is a factor determined by LED brand; the 8mm screen modules Video Design provided proved to be just right. We've had screens where we've needed to drop the output back to 5%, that's too low for the drivers to function properly, but this stuff was just great. We ran at 30%, that's the brightest show we've ever done." April events were also held in Los Angeles, followed by Seattle and Illinois, but for the moment McKinnon is still relishing the event at Wembley. "Alex and the team were just phenomenal. They were such a pleasure to deal with in the lead-up to the show, every time I mailed a request they replied instantly, and it was always 'no problem'. When you come in to do a big one-off event like this you don't really know what you're going to get till you turn up. This was unbelievable, the guys were such a pleasure to deal with. Even during the show, they were completely pro-active, one of them always hovering near front of house to make sure everything was running okay. A very professional service." 
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