Chauvet aids livestreaming business session
- Details
A highlight of the chamber’s educational initiative was the detailed and informative 8 April livestream it hosted by noted author and small business expert Brian Beaulieu, CEO of ITR Economics. A former US Labourr Department economist, Beaulieu delivered his presentation from the Events United Studio Lab, illuminated by a rig that featured Maverick MK2 Spot, Ovation CYC 1 FC, STRIKE 4 and Ovation E-260WW IP fixtures.
Beaulieu was able to communicate the intricacies of his ideas to the audience, located 900 miles from the New Hampshire studio, with the help of a large white video wall made up of Chauvet Professional F2 panels.
Although the massive white space provided a supportive background for the economist to use when calling up the plethora of charts, graphs and tables that illustrated his points, it also presented a challenge for the team lighting the livestream.
“Brian wanted an all-white background, which complicated things a bit,” said Tim Messina owner of Events United. “We had to make the colour temperature of the lights dead on so the white on the video wall matched their presentation, all while making sure the skin and hair tones stayed true on camera.”
Accomplishing this feat began with matching the white of the video wall with the white background colour of Beaulieu’s graphics. “We started with the slide colour from the PowerPoint and used that as our base,” explained Jon Martell, production design manager at Events United. “The slides were formatted by the client, to their desired colour scheme.
“Using our media server, we put up a white background on the video wall, then routed the PowerPoint slide into the centre,” continued Martell. “After that, we modified the white balance of the background to match the white background of the slide. Next, we examined the space between the PowerPoint slide and the background, to ensure that it was seamless. Finally, we adjusted the overall white balance of the video wall and matched it to the PowerPoint slide’s white balance by using our switcher’s multi-viewer. This gave us the best match between the slides and video wall.”
“Throughout the livestream we watched the camera feeds very carefully to ensure that the amount of front light and hair light was at a level that made Brian’s face visible,” said Messina. “The hair light was essential, as it helped separate Brian from the wall behind him.”
Positioning most of their fixtures stage left and stage right, the Events United team at Studio Lab directed their output downward to create texturized patterns and color combinations on the ground. This lent interesting visual variety to the presentation without upsetting the delicately balanced output of the video wall.
