There seems to be an unofficial competition happening in corporate production right now: how much LED can we possibly fit into a room?
Not that long ago, a respectable center screen and a couple of projection surfaces could carry a general session. Now the first scenic rendering arrives and the entire upstage wall is LED. Then somebody adds two returns. Then side screens. Then vertical columns. Then a scenic header. Before long, the video wall has become less of a screen and more of a structural feature of the building.
And somehow, we are putting all of it into the same hotel ballrooms we were using ten years ago.
That is where things get interesting.
The lighting department still needs somewhere to put fixtures. Audio needs PA positions that don't block sight lines. Cameras need their shots. The stage needs entrances. The presenters need somewhere to stand. And eventually someone remembers that there also needs to be a backstage.
None of this is necessarily a complaint. Modern LED has given designers enormous freedom, and some of the stages being built for corporate events now would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. Resolution has improved, pitches have gotten tighter, panels have become more flexible, and creative teams have gotten very good at treating the entire stage as one enormous canvas.
The interesting part is what happens when that creative ambition meets a ballroom with a 16-foot ceiling, chandeliers, limited rigging capacity and an air wall exactly where nobody wants an air wall.
Then the real design process begins.
It becomes a game of inches. Can the wall lose one row? Can the stage come forward another two feet? Can lighting squeeze fixtures between the LED and the ceiling? Can audio move the PA without ruining sight lines? Can video actually get behind the wall if something fails? Can the crew reach the processors after scenic wraps everything in black?
And, most importantly, can anyone still walk backstage without turning sideways?
Maybe this is just where corporate production is headed. LED has become the visual centerpiece of the room, and once clients get used to seeing enormous canvases, it is hard to go back to a couple of projection screens.
But there is something very funny about watching the industry continually discover new ways to fit more pixels into rooms that have stubbornly refused to get any bigger.
At this rate, the next scenic rendering may simply say:
LED wall. Dimensions: ballroom.
-CTC Staff
