Live Events: Sometimes It’s All About the Concrete

One of our important annual events is providing a full production support package to Northwestern University’s annual graduation ceremonies, including sound, lights, video, power generation, and remote TV production for several inter-related graduation facilities.

An element added this year was large-format LED displays to provide image magnification in their 45,000-seat open-air football stadium.

The biggest challenge of providing this technology in this setting was satisfying a matrix of competing and dynamic requirements—safety, image size, resolution, cost, weight, aspect ratio, size and weight of the support structure, and engineering demands given predicable wind speeds.  In the end, the most time consuming aspect was finding, moving and supporting the concrete ballast required by our Structural Engineer to meet the other requirements.

The ballast was fabulous but the sound was even better.

Sometimes it’s more about the concrete (or the pipe and drape, or the up-link) than it is about the sound system.  While our specialty is audio and our mantra is Better Audio By Design, you can rely our experienced Project Managers to help you navigate any production challenge that comes your way.

Gear Highlights

TC Furlong’s Live Events Division is a full-service “one-stop production shop” serving event planners and producers that need more than just high-quality audio equipment.  Every day we are called upon to coordinate details such as backline, lighting, video, rigging, staging, power distribution, tenting, decor, artist ground transportation, remote recording/production trucks, satellite up-link, webcasting, or just about anything required to produce an important event.

For more information about our Live Events Division, contact Jeff Cech at 847.367.9588 or jc@tcfurlong.com.