Upping the Upfront!

Mike Rhoads did it again!

His stunningly innovative set caused a huge buzz at Upfront Week in New York this year, garnering huge plaudits from an extremely happy client.  We already knew that Mike had done something really special even before we got there, one look over his shoulder at the beautiful curved ribbon he was starting to develop on the computer screen was enough to convince me, - “Don’t let that go,” I said “stay with that concept -you’ve got something amazing!”

A week later and he was building an animation to show how all the video elements were going to interact, and I knew he’d nailed it.  Of course there was stress, the budget, which video module to chose, would it actually fit, would the client get how cool it was just from the renderings?....  But we knew somehow that this was a defining job for Mike, a break-through moment, when a whole design vision takes shape.  And the folks at Turner absolutely got it, and endorsed the idea, producing perfect content and building a great presentation worthy of being framed by such a magnificent settting.

As the ribbons got built, and we could see the way the curve just looked “right”, and then seeing video content on them, we started to get pretty confident, but it wasn’t until we go to the Hammerstein Theatre when we saw a complete ribbon together, since the shop just wasn’t that tall, that we could appreciate the shapes in all their sensuous glory as the strip of video went through ninety degrees as it transitioned from facing the audience at the top to swoop and become part of the stage surface at the base.  And then, when we all saw video moving across all those surfaces, and the versatubes adding sparkle in between, everyone’s jaw dropped in unison - it was just that drop dead gorgeous!

Congratulations Mike!  Studio 10A’s first major job, and a great one!  Now, on to the next!