Vectorworks has designs on Pride Month
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A stage designer for the Salt Lake City Pride event each year, Ami Hanna cites the community and her own sexuality as reasons why the event means so much to her.
Hanna took over the Stageline production for Salt Lake City Pride in 2015. She inherited the job from a colleague, Nick ‘Murph’ Murphy, who went on to start Murphy's Production Services.
Murph supplied Hanna with a detailed draft of the event’s Stageline 250 - a drawing he did in Vectorworks. This served as the foundational starting point for each of Hanna’s designs for the following years.
Hanna said that the #PrideSLC event always contains a video wall. “In 2015, video walls weren’t as standard in the industry as they are now. So, we were using a 24 mill. outdoor blow-through wall that used Linsn processors,” said Hanna.
Video wall technology advanced over time, but Hanna decided it shouldn’t be the sole subject of her attention. This is because most of the festival and its performances took place during the daylight, barring a couple of hours on Saturday night.
Instead, the details of each design were centred around one thing: the headlining act.
“I would modify things to accentuate whoever the headlining act was,” said Hanna. “There was always a video wall, always a front light, and I would make sure that SLC Pride gave me all the banners on time.”
New Orleans’ Big Freedia headlined SLC Pride in 2017. Big Freedia’s act is known for having several dancers on stage. Hanna opted for a minimal stage design to let the act shine. “I cut my truss towers by the back video wall, just because I needed to account for having more dancers on stage. I needed more space.”
