EGWolfe

Showing all posts tagged #freelance:

passion to collaborate with leaders and artists in maximizing ideation and strategy

Posted on April 23rd, 2021

I am passionate about helping leaders and artists present the best versions of their ideas. As a Creative Director, I believe that beauty enhances story and experience with magical and intangible impact. I know that great process architecture makes an invaluable difference in the long term; and that it can begin being built during the first project we partner in. With extensive expertise in consulting and designing for special presentations — live event, walk through experience (including window displays), and video presentation *extensive broadcast and streaming experience as well as produced product for playback and sharing — I love collaborating with leadership and artists to maximize ideation and strategy.

Streaming Solutions

Posted on February 24th, 2021

Regarding the explanation of "streaming solutions" and any of "what I do": I am (I hope this doesn't sound cocky) way beyond expert level at leading live event production. Audio, Lighting, Video, Staging, etc. I am a veteran Experience Designer with well over 3000 unique stage, film, event, and display setups. For over 10 years, many of those have been live streamed! It's not even something I think about, it's simply what we do. I've realized that more and more, people are looking for such expertise. I'd love to figure out how to market to be able to capitalize on the opportunity and even more so, have potential clients not waste their time trying to struggle to solve streaming on their own. Streaming is the easy part to us. The benefit is that we also provide coaching of beauty and excellence in execution for the rest of the product. Does that make sense?

Coaching Stage Design

Posted on September 3rd, 2020

So, I’m coaching a Worship Director friend in a consultation thread about the design updates they want to implement on their stage. Here’s a copy/paste of the last message I typed in the thread:

My encouragement to you in thinking about design is to build a mood board of things that you’d like. I can then help you in designing something that is true to your taste and feels current and that will look good for in the room as well as for the lens.

And I definitely encourage not gathering any more than 50% of your inspiration from HOW. Honestly, I recommend staying beneath 10 or even 5% if possible.

The "church scene" is sadly very derivative. Don’t make a copy of a copy of a copy. The best design in the world is inspired by nature and original eureka ideas. If choosing existing work to be inspired by, I suggest studying great architecture, flipping through an art history textbook, or watching a broadway show. Watch the Grammys or some top name as well as highly creative indie concerts if you want something that is more live production. Watching other churches is far too often simply copying people who have copied many people before.

Also, it’s never about specific gear. It’s about the feel that you want to have things look like and the budget and existing inventory that you have access to.

And then I just read this related thought in the book, Disrupt by Luke Williams.

Gobos for Stars

Posted on December 5th, 2018

So I was just consulting one of my clients about gobo choices for a design I coached them on. I’ve been asked about gobos a lot over the years. See past posts (such as http://egwolfe.com/post/some-of-my-favorite-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/gels-and-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/a-note-to-producers-about-the-lighting-cue-sheet) for further thoughts. You can search by hashtags such as #lightingdesign on the right side of the page to make searches through old posts easier. Anyway, I just gave the following advice:

71054 is a good natural look of stars. If you had a cyc, it'd be a no brainer. But it should still look good even the black traveler. I’ve used it before. But I can’t recall for sure if that was on the main traveler which is gray worth the mid traveler which is black.

77884 (called "snow") gets the feel of a star field and shows up better on the black because there's more light.

If I had them (and we used to) I'd be using 71054. I'd pull the snow out as a backup option only. You know me, always having ideas in my back pocket ;)

The Justice Conference 2016 Production Design

Posted on June 14th, 2016

I know you’re asking about it. I hope to fill in the details of this post soon

Dealership Production Design

Posted on October 29th, 2015

Last night we transformed one end of the dealership to celebrate momentum. Red, silver, and white branding is maintained for this main event stage and the rest of the dealership.

VIPs are enjoying catered small plates. The president and others just completed their speeches. Guests are about to experiment the main event.

Pre-show look. Lights are slowly strafing across the ceiling above the "stage" that we made. Truss warmers are twinkling white on the silver sticks of vertical truss and anticipation is in the air (or is that haze?)

I prepared myself in position at lighting control (my Jands Vista S1 - I and/or my console are available for hire/rent) back stage. I transitioned the lights as the intro video played and encouraged the talent to break a leg...

Actually, I took this shot well after the event just before we tore down - through the veil of the CrushedBlack fabric, you can see the car already on stage - in the moment I was too busy firing off a barrage of lighting effects; as well as cuing dancers, actors, and a driver for their moments of the production.

I’m really bummed not to have any photos to share of the live number we performed. Hopefully I can get some shots or video from one of the guests. I wish I had thought to set up a GoPro or few to record.

After the event, I hurried to offer photography to guests as they all wanted to pose with the cast. I managed even to get a #castandcrew shot taken of me (in the coveralls that was part of the branding) with the performers. These guys are great, by the way. If you’re looking for actors and/or dancers (and/or hamsters?) contact me and I can refer you to some great Metro Detroit talent.

One of my other responsibilities was to take photos of the president and leadership holding their awards at the corporate stage for earlier speeches at far end of the room. This is my view walking back toward the main stage. I share it to give context of the space. Even at the end of the night, the mood still feels good in the transformed dealership.

Interesting to contemplate that two hours later, everything is packed up and the morning crew will be able to bring cars back into the space for normal operations.

I think this image is hilarious; this pair of hamsters remained at the ready long after every guest had taken photos and the catering had been cleared.

It was a fun event. It always is when a producer tells me they want to drive a car on stage!

Status Update

Posted on September 1st, 2013

This past week has been great to be with my family. I'm bummed to have not gotten to experience Glacier National Park, but I'll get to at some point, I suppose… I love my boys and their mother more than I enjoy the backcountry. It was the right choice this week.

Anyway, I'm getting caught up on some freelance stuff tonight. Also, as you might have seen on Twitter, I've been working hard on our branding the past couple days. Stay tuned!