4Wall Las Vegas Networks with Seeing Eye Lighting Design at Cisco Live

	Cisco Live convention with 4Wall Las Vegas

The annual Cisco Live convention is essentially the Woodstock of informational technology and networking conferences. Held on multiple continents each year, this year's US event featured lighting design by Paul Efron of Seeing Eye Lighting Design as well as lighting equipment from 4Wall Las Vegas.

Efron, a 15 year veteran of the show, was tasked by event production company George P. Johnson with lighting the main tent of the show. Cisco's keynote speeches, as well as the live show opener, take place within this venue.

This year's opener featured BMX stunt bike rider Danny Macaskill seen on video, followed by five live BMX riders entering from various locations around the room. While the opener was culminating in a series of stunts, the pack of bikers stealthily added Cisco senior vice president (and Cisco Lives' host) Carlos Dominguez to the pack -- dressed in full BMX gear, of course. The big finale unveiled Dominguez in the middle of the pack.

"This opener presented a challenge in lighting multiple stunt bikes entering from different points, as well as lighting them as they moved quickly through stunts and jumping. All the while, we also had to be mindful to not jeopardize the safety of the bikers," said Efron.

Efron utilized truss spots and Vari-Lite VL3500 Spot fixtures to accomplish this task.

Another challenge was lighting Cisco's CEO John Chambers during his keynote presentation, which is considered by many to be the centerpiece of the event. One of the signature elements of his presentation is to present while walking the aisles of the house where he can interact closely and be face-to-face with the audience. This requires a large area of the house to be perfectly lit for not only those in the live audience, but also for those watching online via video broadcast.

Efron spoke of how he was able to make the CEO's speech pop in person and on camera, saying: "We lit the aisles with roughly 50 VL3000 washes as well as two truss follow spots. Those same 50 wash lights were also able to be repurposed for various effects, specials, audience pick-ups, and general themed color washes throughout the house."

Efron spoke of the condition of the 4Wall equipment used on the show: "4Wall's gear was immaculate. It was so clean to the end that executive producer Donna Rutley pulled me aside to tell me how impressed she was as to how clean the rig and equipment looked."