NISSAN XTERRA LAUNCH
Production coverage
by Bruce Jordahl. Photography courtesy of Chris Medvitz. |
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This year, when they hit the Javitz Center in anticipation of their exhibits and press events for Nissan and Infiniti at the New York Auto Show (NYIAS), the George P. Johnson Company had a few new tricks up their sleeve - and few outside their camp could imagine how wet things could get on April 8th, when the new 2005 Nissan Xterra would be unveiled at an exclusive press event. Or what it’s like to work around the clock to make it happen. While George P. typically produce practically every aspect of the Nissan (and Infiniti) events (production, lighting, scenery, video, audio, special effects, exhibits, etc.) this was the first time they were given creative control of the video content production. To this end, Executive Producer Rick Voigt and Creative Director / Production & Lighting Designer Chris Medvitz were afforded a golden opportunity to creatively meld all elements before them - the short intro video, the reveal, the speeches, lighting, staging, etc. into a singular, unified statement. And they left a little time at the end for you to kick the tires. |
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PRODUCTION Voigt and Medvitz brought together the other vendors (LSD / Fourth Phase and sister companies Audio Applications / Video Applications) through George P. Johnson to work on four basic productions: (1) Nissan Booth (2) Infiniti Booth, (3) Nissan Xterra Launch and (4) Infiniti M45 Launch. The two booths faced each other with the best seats for the press events residing in-between the two spaces. Towards the end of an introductory video depicting Xterra drivers using their vehicle in exciting places, the on-screen SUV is starting to get pretty muddy. In a flash, the video’s gone and the ‘real’ muddy Xterra muscles its way on stage, parking atop a custom turntable. In a flash, the audience is transported to a futuristic car wash, where a 15-second lightshow / ‘wash’ produces a squeaky clean model holding Nissan VP Mark McNabb. The entire event - speeches and all, is quite short, but unprecedented in impact. “If we keep our presentation down to eight or nine 9 minutes, the next twelve are spent talking about the vehicles, going up and kicking the tires, and they enjoy that a lot more,” says Voigt. “We hit them with it quick, don’t tell them everything but get them excited, and then invite them up on stage.” TP US spoke with Voigt about how the video and reveal became connected. “We came up with the idea of going to locations that people in Xterras go to – rock climbers, kayakers, and mountain bikers. Our video started out cutting between people driving an Xterra, and then enjoying what they use the vehicle for – to get to a mountain or fabulous river rapids. The one minute video builds a lot of excitement. All through the video the Xterra was getting dirtier and dirtier – and when it came out on stage it was absolutely filthy! It drove up to the center turntable and started turning, then eight nozzles above the car and eight nozzles below the turntable simultaneously fired water, rinsing off all the dirt onstage live in front of the audience!” Of course the dirt was Hollywood Mud, but that didn’t mean the creative group didn’t have to get their hands dirty. “Our water experts were Wet Design, and one of their staff ‘does mud’ for a lot of motion pictures. So we put our own mud on the vehicle ... that could rinse off very easily. We did a lot of testing on the water effect, including a full mockup in George P. Johnson’s office in LA.” With a huge LED wall (supplied by XL Video) behind it – which incidentally can’t take any water splash - plus the audience a dozen feet away from the vehicle, containing the water environment was paramount. “The bottom eight nozzles that shot up were high pressure,” explains Rick, “while the eight on top in the lighting truss were more of a medium pressure – the goal was to get a 12’ cylinder of water to come down in a gentle spray rinse – as opposed to a big 500 gallon dump. We were able to use up to three layers of different colored mud on the Xterra and still rinse it in the 15-second duration,” he confides. Pre-production took place over a three-month period, much of it spent on the video segments. “Chris and I went to a white water rafting location, a California park with redwoods – where you would ride a mountain bike, and to Red Rock, where they climb up here in Northern California.” The video was shot on Super16 and was transferred to hi-def, and the team finished in high-definition video for playback at the auto show. It was edited on an Inferno system. Critical to the overall mission success is Rick’s right-hand man, Technical Director Chuck Knuth, who according to Voigt has the supreme gift of being able to work out the bugs during the pre-production. “Chuck really finds all the problems before we get on-site and solves them – he’s very good at rigging, staging, A/V equipment, etc., and he knows what I want to get accomplished. We also have a second tech director – John Hickey, who’s worked on this the last few years.” In closing, Voigt says this year’s Nissan press event ranks among his favorite production achievements. “This one – with all the challenges,” he says, “three days to load it in and make it happen, having to rehearse both press events back to back so we could actually practice that turn - was a great project to have been associated with. There was quite a bit we had to get done, and through proper planning and execution - and the right team coming together, everyone was satisfied. The client was very happy – it was a huge home run.” AUDIO
Vice president Mark McNabb and Senior VP Jed Connelly used Countryman E6 Isomax earset microphones to deliver the message to the press. “In order to get that executive’s point across to the greatest extent possible, we give them an E6, and we’ve been very happy with the results,” he adds. Wireless is handled via Shure; Ken says each mic is connected to two transmitters – for a little redundancy – plus there’s a venerable 57 or 58 off the side of the stage … just in case all hell breaks loose in RF-land A Telex RTS ETR800 wireless intercom was used for the Xterra driver, “so the stage manager could tell them when to drive, open the door, or turn headlights on.” Newman says Audio Applications are big fans of the versatility and audio quality of the RTS system. “Other communication systems - though they’ll go louder –aren’t of the same audio quality - and when you have your headset on for ten hours a day that makes all the difference. But I’d also mention their versatility – full duplex, there’s an SA output, wireless talkaround –just a lot of features we really utilize.” Twelve Apogee AE5’s are used as outfills and delay speakers, covering the non-seating areas. Four Apogee SSMs are placed on the stage steps to cover the front rows. Crown Macrotech 2400’s handled all the Audio Applications power requirements. Line arrays for corporate theatre was an easy topic with which to engage Newman in audio philosophy: “We’re big fans of the line array concept, i.e. getting very even coverage from a small source. In theory, the speakers are easy to get up in the air and generate a big sound over a wide area, relative to their actual size. We use them whenever possible, and this is a perfect application because one of the things you need on this gig is ease of installation and minimal size. Being a JBL VerTec house (“we’ve been extremely pleased with the overall product – it’s extremely well designed, very durable and roadworthy, and very easy and quick to setup!”), Audio Applications supplied two 4880’s subs per side, and flew four 4880’s per side, trimming out at around 24’. Because of the proximity of the Nissan and Infiniti displays, Ken was able to use the Infiniti display’s PA system for surround and fx tricks. “We used Infiniti’s PA - four L’Acoustics ARCs per side and four Meyer 650 sub’s - for surround sound with the effects tracks of the video playback. It made for a more dynamic experience, and was effective for the dramatic moments,” he adds. Front-of-house console for the press events was a Soundcraft MH4 – they used a single front end with multiple BSS Soundwebs to handle all routing of signals to speakers. “Soundcraft is our large console of choice because of its price/performance ratio,” Ken offers, “which is very high in ‘bang for the buck’. It’s an extremely versatile console, and does everything we need it to do for our corporate events.” Booth zoning tools were provided by George P. Johnson and encompassed 46 EAW JF80s, an Allen & Heath automated mixer, and racks of QSC amplifiers. “We provide the booth soundtrack,” Ken explains, “and as product specialists come out and demonstrate the features of each vehicle, that needs to be heard by the audience near that vehicle, so we use a multi-zoned system. For dynamics, Ken likes to use BSS DPR404’s – usually a channel on each subgroup so that the podium and lav mics and E6s are all as even as possible. “These days,” he points out, “there’s not as much of a dynamic range or gap between music and speech, and it’s because of microphones like the E6. So we tend to use compression less frequently, but will do a little bit on the video playback to keep it very much in your face. I usually rely on the onboard compression in our Yamaha O3D digital console. I love to use it for videotape playback – just because of the variance we’ll get from one videotape to the next. I’ll do a preset for each videotape playback on the O3D during rehearsal, and simply recall that preset when tape rolls during the event. Limiting and gating is subtle, but one trick Ken does employ – ‘very few people hear it, but they’re the important people’ - is to use Soundweb’s Leveler component on the external press, web etc. feeds. “The Leveler keeps things very constant, and is void of those ‘pumping’ type sounds.” Audio Applications will
typically bring a rack of Lexicon, TC Electronics and other effects
gear to shows with live entertainment, but with the two elements –
speech and videotape playback, effects were rendered superfluous by
the natural reverb of the Javitz Center. One key ingredient to sound success for Newman is his use of Metric Halo’s Spectrafoo. “I’m a Mac guy from way back,” Ken confesses. “Back when Smaart came out, I bought a copy, thinking I could use Soft Windows to run it. Then I learned it didn’t support the audio input. To make a long story short, instead of buying a new PC so I could run Smaart, I discovered Spectrafoo and remain a big user to this day - it’s been helping me tune rooms around the world ever since!” LIGHTING
AND VIDEO
But it was the Xterra video and its complementary water trick that really bangs you over the head as a cohesive concept. “People purchase that vehicle as a tool to fit a lifestyle; it’s going to get you and your gear to the mountains, ocean snow or wherever,” Chris adds. “We thought we should show the way the consumers are using this vehicle in their daily lives.” The video motion was achieved with Chainmaster Variolift variable speed chain motors. “Both sets had a very large LED video display,” says Medvitz. “In the case of Nissan, the reveal started the show , so during the run of the video the stage is empty, and rather than having the video screen hang way up in the ceiling, we hung it down very low to the stage – and actually front projected video on to the two sidewalls during the high-energy parts. “As the Xterra was driving up on the stage, we raised the LED screen into position behind it – it’s subtle because everyone’s looking at the car and because of the Variolifts, which ramp up and down and move quite smoothly.” In building a lighting design around these elements, Chris points out he was already designing a large design to light the exhibit. “It’s very seamless to integrate the press needs into that larger picture,” he says. But he does point out a need perhaps greater than the press - the needs of the camera. “I really try to look at things through the camera eye and pay attention to camera angles,” he says. “There are going to be shots to show the whole stage, but also a lot of tight shots – everything from the headlights to the bumper to the executive, and in all these tight shots you’re not going to see the whole set – rather a little snippet of backdrop. We try to - through color or texture or materials – make that backdrop convey the sensibility of the stage and of the whole show.” Nissan’s corporate
color is red, which usually means incorporating red backgrounds into
a non-red-friendly video environment. “Not the camera’s
favorite color,” Medvitz laughs. Hanging on that at about 28-ft. for exhibit lighting in the Nissan space is a whack of TMB PowerPars to light the exhibit and the vehicle. “In Infiniti we use warmer materials, more natural woods in the exhibit architecture, so we usually use the PowerPARs to light the product, along with a lot of quartz ETC Source Four PARs and Source Fours to light the rest of the environment,” Chris offers. “We keep a no-color vibe – and that warm-white quartz light really works well on the warm colors and wood. Even using a daylight fixture with a CTO filter on it deadens that warmth to my eye. “We always add in a layer of lighting specific for the press event; this time we used High End Studio Beams for the vehicle product lighting - as an automated daylight washlight, and we also had a bunch of the Martin MAC Performance 2K’s we used for the executive speaker lighting and for a few specials. They’re great because they’re daylight, readily available, they have a very precise shutter cut, and intensity and diffusion control. We’re able to be really theatrical with it, but also have the flexibility to focus quickly from a console rather than with labor on a lift. Using automated fixtures makes a lot of sense.” For the water trick itself, Medvitz used another half-dozen MAC Performance fixtures hung and positioned in very specific locations to tightly shutter cut and light the air space the water was falling through – and not the scenery. Martin Atomic 3K strobes were also used to punch up that portion of the show. Most color was dialed in and refined with the automated lighting’s color-mixing. “We did use a Rosco 26 for uplighting one part of the set,” Chris says, “but over in Infiniti it was mostly no-color. One part of the stage has natural wood and also faux concrete – a greyish, olive tint – that under some light is green and others is grey; we wanted grey so we tinted the quartz fixtures with a little bit of minus green (Rosco 3318) to keep that color in its place.” Rigging was large at around 80 points – the lighting trusses, video projectors, LED screens, tracking video, tracking scenery, cable picks, audio, etc. Rigging Technologies was contracted through Fourth Phase for rigging duties. Medvitz also placed MAC 2K wash lights on the floor back in the reveal area for the Infiniti show, so when the upstage doors opened the MACs backlit vehicle for a ‘Close Encounters’ silhouette vibe. One thing both exhibits and press events shared was dimming and control. “Everything was conceived as one large lighting system – all controlled with one console, one dimmer room, one set of drawings,” says Chris. “We used a Whole Hog II with no time code, just a simple manual show. Dimming was via ETC Sensor racks; the team also used the Sensors in non-dim mode for the quartz fixtures. Lighting programmer was Henry Sume. To wrap it all up, Medvitz says, “This was a great opportunity to put together all our available design elements and capabilities. This was the first time I’ve been able to take on the role of creative director; I’d done show design along with lighting before, but this time George P. Johnson ended up being the overall creative agency for these events, responsible for everything but the executive speeches themselves!”
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