Sunday night's Emmy awards telecast did little for bored viewers and critics, but you can spare your event the same fate. Check out these ideas for staging, seating, technology, and more to inspire an engaging revamp for an annual award show.
The BET Awards took over the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live this summer, and although the show garnered critical praise, the biggest story to come out of the annual hoopla wasn't on the big night's main stage. Instead, the most noted development was that BET remade its annual telecast this year into a weekend-long event known as the BET Experience, a festival that drew thousands of fans downtown for music, yes—but also for panels, films, seminars, and more. In the BET “We Got You” pavilion, produced by Events by Fabulous, fans could check out BET shows in the programming lounge and listen to music at the gospel listening station. Crowds also gathered for meet and greets with cast members from BET shows. Activities included a green-screen music video booth and a so-called “photo bomb” station to crash snapshots with popular BET celebs.
Bring in a striking visual artist for an eye-catching new approach to a stale stage show. New York artist Charlene Lanzel creates images in sand on a light table. As she works, a camera projects her progress onto a screen so the audience can watch. Her standard performance is a 25-minute set of original designs, but clients can also request logos and other custom images. Fees range from $1,200 to $5,000.
After a radical format change, which in 2011 replaced the traditional seated dinner with a reception followed by dessert and the presentation ceremony, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International once again reworked its Adrian Awards gala in New York last year. The event implemented some new ideas that would allow the 800 industry professionals in attendance more time and space to socialize with their peers and view the winning work. Central to the revamp was maintaining a comfortable environment for the hospitality execs to network. That meant tweaking the layout of the dinner reception's stations, bars, and seating to provide more room for guests to maneuver, plus offering a more reception-friendly menu. The organizers also added extra time between the end of the reception in the hotel's eighth-floor Broadway Lounge and the start of the award presentation on the sixth floor, giving attendees more time to get settled at their tables.
Looking for more audience engagement to rev up the energy? Get the crowd going with color-changing, motion-sensitive Zygote balls from Crowd Activation, a newly launched division of Canadian creative studio Tangible Interaction devoted to the company’s physical interactive products. An updated take on the crowd-surfing beach balls often spotted at rock concerts, the lightweight, seven-foot-wide helium-inflated balloons respond to human touch with random or pre-programmed colored light displays. Customized interactions—like letting guests influence the music or video-screen graphics when they touch the Zygotes—are also possible. Made from fireproof material and containing wireless LED lights, the rechargeable balls have a one-hour operating life. Custom vinyl stickers or logos can be applied to the Zygotes.
TD Bank's employee recognition dinner in 2009 was meant to feel not at all like a typical dinner and presentations, as it had in previous incarnations. The guest list shrank from 2,000 to 100, and attendees dined at and presented from a single, organically shaped table, designed by Tribbles Home & Garden. (Blooms in varying colors on the place settings helped attendees locate their seats at the unconventional structure.) Clear glass vessels filled with orchid blooms hovered over diners. Also absent from the proceedings was a stage. Instead, speakers—seated next to the employees they were lauding—stood at the table to make the presentations. Additional personal touches included the use of magnetic name tags (emblazoned with hand calligraphy) in place of less refined plastic pin-on badges, a hall of fame displaying photos of the evening's winners, and an after-party decorated with white lounge furniture in casual configurations.
For a dramatic award show, take a cue from live music acts and punch up your stage set with wild visuals. "Reflection mapping” is an innovation from V Squared Labs that uses mirrors, light, and sculptural form to dramatic effect—and it's just debuting on the live event scene this month. The visual arts studio teamed up with electronic dance music group Krewella to create the visual technology as a stage set for the band's tour. Dubbed “the Volcano,” the set comprises mapped crystal structures, with crystals made out of one- and two-way mirrored acrylic plastic outfitted with reflective backing to create an interior mapping effect. Each crystal is also equipped with either LED, video LED tape, or both, inside, creating complex reflection effects that appear visually to change the structure from within. V Squared Labs founder Vello Virkhaus and lead designer Amanda Hamilton collaborated with fabricator and technical engineer Stefano Novelli to bring the vision of ”'reflection mapping” from pencil sketches and creative reference point into the real world. Want to try something similar for an award show? Hamilton said there are future applications for the concept: “The effect of contained infinite reflections is a technique we'd love to explore further, as controlling chaos is an exciting challenge.”
Mix things up every year for an event that people will want to keep attending. From a dinner onstage at a historic theater to a family-style feast inspired by a royal banquet, Clarks's annual award dinner gets a lush, distinctive setting and look every year. For this year's event at Boston's Royale Nightclub in June, the footwear company's senior director of corporate events and community relations, Jane Feigenson, drew inspiration from two very disparate sources: street art and the opera. “The nightclub was originally an opera house and has a cool vibe,” Feigensen said. “I played off the opulence of opera and mixed in splashes of graffiti and grunge.” The look was both glam and grunge—and very cohesive.
Take a cue for a successful night from one of the biggest televised award shows. When we polled planners after last year's National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' 54th Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, we found their favorite components of the event was the stage set. Javier Velarde said the best part was: “The set design. It was clean, modern, high-tech, and worthy of 'music’s biggest night.' Throughout the night it changed colors, but never more than one color at a time, which goes to prove less is more. I also liked the lighting. Lighting designer Bob Dickinson is in a class of his own—is there anything he doesn’t do? The color palette. They used ‘black and gold’ throughout the night, the Grammy colors, which looked classy and sophisticated. Great branding and the golden amber lighting gave it warmth. There was great use of technology too. LED set, LED lighting, LED screens, LED stages, LED backdrops."
Keep guests' eyes on the stage and off the smartphones in their laps with a dramatic visual presentation, like this one: Inspired by an explosion, illuminated acrylic structures expanded out from the center of the main stage at the Much Music Video Awards in Toronto last year.
If guests can't clearly see what's happening on stage, you've lost them from the word go. Use multiple screens to keep the program accessible, and incorporate them in a way that grabs the eye. Like this: ESPN's big annual ESPY award show took over the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, where multiple screens and illuminated panels created a vibrant and dynamic stage set that continually changed its look throughout the program.
