When you are thinking of new ideas what is too big? How do we create new things that are fun and engaging without being too crazy? This week we brought back Amy Zaroff, and she spent some time interviewing Charles. Listen this week’s episode with two visionaries talking about creating.
On season one, we featured some amazing guests with years of experience in the events and meeting world. We handpicked some of the moments we thought highlighted the best tips and tricks. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did putting it together.
Hal Lovemelt, an Event Technologist, talks about the creative side of events. Ever wanted to know how to use new technology to captivate your event? Hal brings a perspective we haven’t yet seen on the Meeting Minds podcast!
Tell us about you. What is an event technologist?
To illustrate where it comes from for me is, I would tell you a little bit about my background. I got sucked way into TV, public access TV. We did live public access TV in Minneapolis, every Sunday night live on air with a phone number on it. I considered it my education. We had to come up with content for an hour every sunday night. We had to free for all it, it was an improvise show. People could call in and interact with us. It was called Freaky Deeky. Everyone that came on was a freak. It was the freakiest show you could do and very experimental. We had a lot of costumes, basically a mountain of costumes and a huge green screen studio. Everyone improvised we came up with a skit in a matter of seconds. Did weird things, the callers would interact with us and help us to do weird things. I was behind the scenes doing the technology and mixing the feeds and doing video art with lots of different camera angles. We had 4 different camera kpeople and they are all dedicated, and we would make this show every week on Sunday without fail and that kind of forced us to come up with a streamline process for the creative thinking around video experiences.
I realized it’s less fun to watch the show, it’s more fun to be on the show. When we would be done with the show the guests would come and watch it and they would be having a blast seeing themselves. I said that’s it, I have to put people on camera, give them their moment of fun on camera. I built a really crazy ghetto video booth out of wood and I would bring it to clubs. I was still a kid at the time and we would do these dance nights but I would have this crazy green screen and little tv studio you would walk in. It was a hit so one thing led to another and we kept upgrading and upgrading and we are basically on version 10 now.
You’re kind of inventing a whole new interactive experience when it comes to this photo booth type thing. How does that work and what does it do?
In the beginning what happened a lot was people would come up to it and see it and see people getting all weird and stretching their face and they thought it was fun and cool. They thought it was just playback and they’d look and see people in their and realize it was live and then they would get really excited and want to jump in. Then they’d realize when you were in there you could see yourself on a makeshift teleprompter. I get all those bumps everytime i see someone get that moment of magic in their eye. I keep getting motivation to upgrade and keep developing.
You’re writing software, code, and meshing things together.
I basically got so dedicated to this kind of medium that I learned how to code just to do this.
How does this all tie in to larger events and stages?
My craft is actually a more visual artist and a VJ. I’ve done a lot of stage shows for bands. I’ve projection mapped for orchestra hall and festivals and stuff. I will do lighting and video installations for experimental bands here in town. The way it ties in is kind of a deeper understanding for taste and how to mix this different kind of visual art with sound and lighting and a mood. I’ve had a few opportunities to whole event moods and design a whole event where things got a lot crazier.
You were telling me about kinetic lighting, talk about that.
I think it’s the next big thing. I’d like to see it for an audience. It’s definitely seen on the stage and around a fashion show or something. I’d love to see it used in an audience fashion where the audience is interacting with it in a more cohesive way. Waves of people are controlling different moments of it. I’ve seen different approaches to the challenge of large interactions, customized apps with video wall software. You hold your phone up and you’re 1 pixel of an image. There may be apps now that do that, but a couple of artists have done that in the past where they’ve done it with a touch designer system. What that does is it opens what I get excited about in the industry as a whole is companies and small studios developing really unique solutions to interesting event problems and having a market for it.
When you say software what do you mean?
I’m more talking about the service product. For years event producers will come up with a crazy idea and say this is nuts but can you do it, to a big house. A solution house and they will say yeah we can do it and they work tirelessly and make it happen. Whether or not the execution is good, that was a one off because it has to be a one off right? You have to do the next big thing that hasn’t been done before. However what I’m getting excited about is people are realizing that is a very inefficient model for the industry. You can come up with ideas and make products and flush them out over time. Everytime you deploy it keep flushing it out and have that product be a single product you can sale.
If you put on an event and spend all the time and effort to build something cool that’s used once it feels wasteful. Is there technology that will track somebody?
Yeah BlaxTrack. If you buy one I will help you set it up.
Will it integrate with all of our Martin Lighting and can hook it up to our DMX board?
Yeah but it’s not that simple. This system is really quick, you can move you can run and it will track you. It’s tough and it’s just so expensive.
Is that something they use for concerts like following a performer?
Circ de sole, maybe big concerts?
Could you projection map lighting on a human figure and cut them out real time?
So it’s just hitting them? So the fallout doesn’t happen? (yes) Typically what happens, the projector itself the framerate wouldn’t keep up. It wouldn’t feel real, you’d see the edges and see the cross bleed. Most of the time people do that with depth sensors which are low res, that will change and things will get crazy when that changes. Depth sensor now, you can cut people out you can make really simple background subtraction but it’s choppy and low res. You make a blob.
What I do with background subtraction where I can cut people out in total darkness without a green screen, that technology can;t be applied to any scenario, but with depth cameras it could be applied to any scenario once the resolution is there. You can imagine walking past a wildont and a camera being in the window and looking at it and it completely cuts you out from the scene you are in.
It’s like live rotoscoping.
Yes exactly.
For those of you listening rotoscoping is a film term. In post production, let’s say you have a video of somebody standing in a family room and there is a chair in the background. Rotoscoping is frame by frame they cut the person out or a particular item and manipulate it. You don’t have to have them stand in front of a green screen to have a background behind them. Another use would be when somebody is using a bald cap makeup so it looks like there is bald. There is always wrinkles and edges so you will edit out the wrinkles frame by frame and blend them.
There are whole production houses that just make actors look tinier bit skinnier or fix them.
Tell me about the theatrical element of an event. I think a lot of meeting planners are always seeking new ideas to engage the audience.
In my opinion it’s all about attention. Most event producers know that too, it’s all about getting the attention: creative voices of god. It can be really upgraded and really creative ideas. I want to encourage event producers to not limit their crazy ideas just because they don’t think it’s possible. If you have a crazy idea for something and the answer that you say to yourself is but one one will be paying attention that problem can easily be solved. If you have something really unique like an elephant walking in and out of the room – something crazy for a gala or something I say go for it. Just really nail the attention part. Corralling people is always a challenge for event people. If the cocktail hour is going long and everyone is still gabbing and you need them to get into the venue, you can flash the lights or strobe the lights and make a crazy scene where a car crashed into the building you can go nuts you can go crazy.
A lot of the non profit events that raise money for years before they worked with us they struggled to get the attention of the audience to stay on stage. Or getting them into the ballroom in a given period of time. You are right, using directed attention and cues to pull people in, it’s age old stuff.
The age old stuff is the stuff that works the best.
When you can control the sound and the visual you can really control the audience and what they are looking at.
Don’t be afraid to make a couple guests mad. When I would bring that up early in my career, why don’t we go dark. Somebody has to put their glasses on, but they have a family that can help them.
If you are going to cater to everyone you’re not going to cater to anyone.
Tell us more about the onstage theatrics.
I’ve see a lot of cool things. I saw this show in Berlin that blew my mind. This goes back to kinetic lighting. They made and now sells the DMX motors. This was one of their first projects they built these one meter mirror disks and had LED edging on the disc, and both sides were mirrored. They had three points of being hung and three motors per disc. They had 100 discs and they were hung in a very interesting pattern and all of them could move up and down and they lined the room with the grid of the movers. Very nice precision movers. I talked to the guy later and he told me he had to calibrate them every day because the room ambience of the heat and stuff changes. This act was very precise. They would have the show that was synced to music and sounds where they make these crazy patterns and shoot pointed lights at these mirror. You would be underneath and they would get really close then go up.
You will see a lot of these motors coming into the A/V houses because it’s a cool easy thing to wow someone.
Even if you move anything during a show people are so excited. What other cool things can you technologists do?
Anything you can dream of!
Tell me about projection mapping vs LED.
It depends on the application. Although i’ve seen an LED video booth and I’m very intrigued, it’s that there’s a cost difference that is so hard to get beyond. I’m a resolution kind of guy, I’m really into it especially with what kind of art I do. I don’t want a low res LED wall. It’s about the pitch of the LEDs. If it’s a huge stage it doesn’t matter because people are far away from it. All my ideas with LEDs have people being close. Small pitch LED walls are really expensive.
I don’t understand why a 4k 70 inch tv is $1000 and the pixel density is microscopic and you can walk up to the TV and be an inch from it and still not see the pixels. Why can’t we use that to make LED walls.
It’s never bright enough. We put TVs on the side for my video booths they are awesome but if you look at the whole thing we put Robis up top and we have pixel strips going down the side and those always make the TVs look dark. They make really bright tvs and we’ve purchased them. THe problem is you can’t get the $1000 tv. They make display tvs that are made to run 24/7 and made to look good in broad daylight those are still Tvs, still LCD and they are way more expensive than your average TV. The brighter you get the lower, crappier black and color levels.
Give us things you’d like planners to think about when using technology.
I always like to say don’t take the human out of technology. I’m kind of anti automation to a certain degree when it comes to technology. I don’t like kiosks at all. I like humans being involved and that comes back to the theatrical part and that will make things memorable.
One think I’d really like planners to think about is bringing your vendors together to the creative table. As a video booth designer, all I want to do is work with bigger and greater decor companies to make crazy sets and come up with cool ideas. That way we are not splitting the budgets. Bring everybody together.
hal@feedback.video
Meeting Minds by Eidecom
We were able to bring Kat Perkins into the EideCom studio to talk about her experience working with A-List talent. She shares what makes an event engaging and successful. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!
Tell us about your story, being on the voice and all that.
It was crazy. I actually was out of the music industry for a while. I had a rock band we had a record deal. I moved here at 18 and started a band in the early 2000’s. It was quite the music scene here, we got a record deal within a few years of forming our band. I ended up having a cyst on my left vocal cord that paralyzed my whole left side of my voice. It inhibited me from speaking or singing. I thought I’d have surgery and be fine, but it was not. 3 months turned into 8 months turned into 12 and I lost the record deal, agent, manager. They had to move on with their lives and I get it. It was totally random people get them on their wrist or shoulder and I got it on my vocal chords.
Now I can say it was the best thing to happen to me. It was hard to say that for a while. I had to change my sites which led me to a nanny job in Edina, MN. 5 kids, so fun. I came from a long line of teachers so it made sense for me to foster and educate kids. A family that is going to hire a tattoo rocker chick is a pretty cool family. I connected with these kids and one of their favorite things was watching the voice, otherwise I’m not sure I would have watched it. A year after being introduced to the show I got an email on youtube from the producers of the show and they asked me to try out for their show. It was a video that went viral, I didn’t even know about it. It was from my past life, I was singing at a piano in an airport and the rest is history. A few months later I was on team Adam and my life was completely changing.
From a small town in North Dakota to moving to the big city to having everything at my fingertips to nothing to then being on the voice and now my life is like whoa! I can’t even believe I’m sitting here with that story. I was pretty content with being a nanny and fine with it. I was just about to start playing out again and doing some bar gigs. Suddenly I was in front of 15 million people.
What is it like when you are on the voice?
The word for it is intense. Although I don’t want that to be negative because it is really fun. Imagine being around 200 people that do the exact same thing that you do and want the same thing out of life. That is inspiring. If you don’t get intimidated by that then you can use that energy and try to become a better singer. The schedule is hard. There’s competition in it which makes it hard. That’s what makes it a great TV show because music and competition don’t normally go together. It’s a hard schedule if you’ve ever been behind the scenes of any TV show it’s like a circus. It’s going so fast and all you can do is sit there and get your makeup done and sing the best you can. Your mind will never let go that 15 million are watching and you need votes. You become super competitive and want to win.
They don’t let you drink on the voice which I think is really great. I couldn’t imagine doing that or being hungover. They try to keep you safe. You do pretape the blinds, battle, and knockouts. You know how far you’ve advanced before america does. It’s hard to keep that secret. A million dollar clause, if you break that you are sued immediately. I had to tell the family I was nannying for but I was telling people I was off at rock and roll camp or some sort of bootcamp. RIght before it starts airing you can say I auditioned for the voice until it catches up. You pretape it then you go back. Everyone’s finding out the same info you are in real time.
How far in advance are you taping?
It’s a long time. My blind audition was in October, the whole month. It’s four weeks for a 90 second audition. That was October and I didn’t air until March. You’re coming back home every few weeks for the breaks and people are like, “where are you what’s happening.” I had the best job in the world and the family held onto my position. They just wheeled around their schedules to not hire another nanny. There are so many people with full time jobs, or going to college, or have kids. I can say this now, you don’t get paid for the first part. At a certain point you have to join the union, then you get paid for the airtime, but that’s months into the process. And it doesn’t make up for what you lost.
Thank god I had a family that supported me. Friends, people started a go fund me, we sold t-shirts. My boyfriend was holding down the fort at home, paying the rent.
What did you tell people in your not close circle?
I’m doing extensive training in Los Angeles, I was thinking people thought I was at rehab. I’m a rock chick, I mean, no stranger to a cocktail. I was telling people I was trying to get back in the business. They said great keep going, take meetings in LA. There were people at the actual hotel you’re staying. They see you kumbaya – ing around the fire and singing constantly. It’s super loud you can hear people warming up. They would ask if we were filming and we said we were at rock and roll camp.
You were on team Adam, tell us about that.
I feel like now that I know people on a bunch of teams especially since I’m on a Facebook forum, Adam showed up and filmed but he also loved to loiter. He was a people’s person, once it got down to 6 of us on our team, I would go hang out with him while he’s waiting to film. As far as voice lessons go, and what you’re seeing vs not, we spent about 45 minutes a week with him. It was more than I thought it would be, but a lot of people go Oh god that’s nothing. At one point we had a three hour rehearsal with one of my songs because it wasn’t going well, he was there and he rode it out with all of us. I’m sure getting union over time.
Was he really coaching you?
He really was for me. He really took special care into picking the songs and making sure I was comfortable and that the producers weren’t driving the bus too much. He wanted me to swim down a certain lane and if we went a certain way we could get the votes. It was winter in MN so we could get a lot of votes. We still keep in touch, I don’t know if anyone else has that story but I could text him now. He threatens we’re going to golfing one day. He came through town recently and I asked to hang out, we had sushi and beer. He loves to help me, he tweets about my new singles. He’s the real deal for me. I don’t know if i’m the only one. He has no business remembering who I am it’s season 15 now. I gave him a prince onesie for his newborn, and he hand wrote a thank you. I gave him some little t-shirts when he came through town. He’s so excited about being a dad, loves his wife, she’s amazing. He’s 6 2’ everyone thinks he’s so little but he’s not. Blake is 6”5’ so he makes everyone seem little.
Now that you are done with the voice and you’ve moved on, 4 years, what are you doing now?
Well we came home and I went back to my nanny job for 2 months because I was under contract. I had to wait until I was free and clear from anything NBC universal wise, and I decided to dive back into the music industry. Released a single called Fearless. I wanted something that encapsulated my experience, I know I was a rocker and it’s not a rock song but it’s the inspiration I wanted out there. It compelled me to talk about overcoming obstacle, like the surgery and never thinking I’d be in the industry. I would get all these twitter messages from teachers about coming to their classes. I would pop into these classrooms and talk to these kids, let them ask me questions and sing for them. It was a surprise for them. All these teachers said why don’t you put together assemblies and see if you can go to the legislature and if they will fund you to do this. So we did. WE go the ND legislature behind this, the MN people behind this. I started to make it an anti bullying campaign with the follow your dreams message, be kind you’ll get farther, I wasn’t on the voice because I was unkind. I didn’t get the votes because I was a meany.
The teachers love it, they talk to the kids everyday about it, but after I leave they say that the kids are using their manners. “Kat says to be kind, etc” it inspired me to keep going. I was still doing concerts, I was on a full tour trying to fit the school assemblies in. I never worked harder in my life ever. It started to get me going, you know this may be good for adults and we put together a corporate campaign. We went into companies and turned my message to being fearless in your workspace. Stepping over the line of fearful to finding success on the other side. A lot of times we are not dealing with fear, we are dealing with doubt. You are doubting yourself and your self confidence. It’s been a crazy journey and great ride, to be able to talk to people like that and share my experience.
Aside from going out and performing at galas, what else are you doing?
Now we are in preparation for my big christmas tour. I was a huge Loreline fan growing up. I grew up playing piano and playing her songs. I met her finally, she’s little, she’s my height. She’s so inspiring and started doing this christmas tour and I thought why can’t i do that? IN the concert world it’s hard to work in December January February. It’s great to do summer festivals and fall and spring fests, but when it comes to winter now what?
I put together this variety show. It’s way different. I know a lot of people think of me as the girl that sings Heart or Fleetwood Mac. We do traditionals, I write a ton of christmas music each year, we record records, I tap dance in the show, I play my french horn, my dad tours with me and plays horn with me, it’s a family affair. I tell people to bring their kids. It’s Christmas, nobody is more Christmas than me, I was born December 23rd, just in time for Christmas.
Tell me more about that…
We really focus on the midwest, especially when you are in a van and trailer in the winter time. You get stuck places so we keep it close. MN, SD, ND, WI, IA. We do about 20 dates a year.
We do it at Chanhassen, we were approached a couple years ago, they have the fireside theatre. I said let’s give it a shot. Instead of doing one big ordway or Orpheum, we do five at Chanhassen. It’s super intimate, we pull people on stage and it makes sense in the 500-800 person theatre. Chanhassen is 300 so we do more. It’s all wood and has the A-frame, it feels like Christmas. That starts November 29, 30, December 1,2, 3. We’ve been in rehearsal, been prepping the tour. We have costumes custom built for all of us. 10 person band we have an orchestra. Tickets are on sale for all locations. Go to katperkins.com It’s a christmas extravaganza!
The people who listen to our podcast are in the meeting and event space. From a performer’s perspective. How do you engage with an audience and make them feel more connected?
When it comes to meetings and events, the music part- every big event I’ve been at it’s fun to celebrate the end of the night with a party and dance, enjoy a concert at the end after they have raised money for a great cause. When it’s within a show we use my songs that are more inspirational to tug at the heartstrings. During the program. I have a song called you are not alone that just fit totally for the Ronald McDonald house. Fearless works a lot within meetings and corporations because it’s inspirational.
Speaking is kind of self serving. Talking to people about how to live a better life, a more successful life, how to be happy and enjoy the success and not dwell on the things that go wrong. Redefine win. On the voice I didn’t win I got fourth place but I won in the sense that 600,000 auditioned for that show and I got 4th. So I won! I love giving that message too. It doesn’t always mean the trophy or new car, which I wanted on the voice. The top three got a car, on my season it was a kia. Now they do Nissan, maybe toyota. Redefining winning is big. Helping people step outside of their comfort zones. I don’t want to date myself too much, but as we get older and the audiences that I’m speaking to it’s harder to be brave. It’s harder to get over that dwelling failure thing that we have in our peripheral. I’ve learned to overcome that every single day. I have to make that choice and a lot of people won’t put that together unless they are told it’s a decision.
You seem very grateful and happy and not stressed by people wanting to be fans. You stay around to talk to everybody.
It goes far with fans and that’s why I do it. People asked if I’m bugged by going to the mall of america and being bombarded by people. I love that, I have to add an extra half hour. I worked all my life for that thing and to have those fans. On my side of it, I want those fans because I want to be able to inspire them. Do you know how many artists inspired me to be where I am? If I had the chance to tell them, I would totally take that chance and hopefully they would receive that. That’s part of it, I love my life and job that way. Even if I am the ending band at a meeting or a gala or something I definitely stick around to say thank you. A lot of people have never heard of me until then, and that’s great, I just want to connect and brighten their day and celebrate. That’s my job.
I have the story where we had a ton of lysiums back in the day. We had a ton of people come through my school from poets to singers to world war 2 survivors holocaust survivors magicians anti drug campaigns there were so many I remember. I remember being inspired by a WW2 survivor. I saw him at our school and I did all my speeches about that man and his journey. He changed my life. He’s no longer with us but it was that moment that really helped me become who I am. I hope i have kids all over the place talking about this 20 years down the line. I hope people are inspired by me. The great thing about the voice it appeals to ages 5-85 and when I got off the show that was my goal. Keep appealing to ages 5-85, why wouldn’t you?
Contact page goes straight to her phone
Meeting Minds by EideCom
Interested in growing your events? On today’s episode Amy Zaroff shares her experiences in the events industry and the core values of her business! Today is all about creating your business’ culture through core values to grow events. Check out Amy Zaroff at www.amyzaroff.com
