HOW TO LIGHT UP YOUR NEXT CORPORATE EVENT

In this illuminating conversation, we shine a light on corporate events with Howard Werner, Principal of the New York office of Lightswitch, and lighting designer extraordinaire. Howard is a super-bright guy filled with enlightening insights.

You can read the transcript below or listen to Episode 15 on the episode page, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

EPISODE 15 TRANSCRIPT

JEREMY: Alright, so I am here with the principal of the New York Office of Light Switch and Lighting Designer Extraordinaire, Howard Werner. Howard, thank you so much for being on our podcast.

HOWARD: Jeremy, thank you for inviting me. My pleasure.

JEREMY: Oh, this is so exciting. Now you and I go back a long time. We met in like 1924 or something like that.

HOWARD: I think it was 24'.

JEREMY: Yeah, 24'. It was 24'. Well, it could have been 1994 or I think even earlier than that.

HOWARD: Yeah, it is definitely the early 90s and it's been a long time, so it's great to see you and to talk to you.

JEREMY: Back then you were a lighting designer for the Atlantic Theater Company as well as other Broadway and off-Broadway venues. I was interning there and working on various shows, and I'd love to hear a little bit of that history from you. How did you get involved in New York Lighting Theater for shows, and then how did you transition to the event industry?

HOWARD: Wow. It's a long history. I got involved with the Atlantic Theater Company and there were interns at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. I was a staff electrician at the Goodman. David Mamet and William H Macy were teaching a thing called practical aesthetics at NYU, and that class went to Chicago for an internship. I became fast friends with many of the members of the Atlantic Theater Company, and that relationship lasted till today. I'm still a member and technically the resident lighting designer of the Atlantic Theater Company.

I met a couple of people who said, you should come to New York. I did the assisting on Broadway, touring with Paul Taylor Dance Company, and touring Europe with them. That relationship with various designers turned into a lighting design career of my own. I transitioned from assisting to full-on designs myself for Broadway shows, off-Broadway shows, and regional theater.

Then it's funny how you transition from the thing that you grew up doing. I started doing lighting for theater in high school to the corporate world. We transitioned to something that's very similar to what we love to do. We're still doing the lighting that we like to do but for a different element now which is corporate theater, architectural lighting, museum lighting… anything that pertains to light really, I do that.

My firm does that also. We have a large firm with offices all around the country, and we do a lot of various projects.

JEREMY: You mentioned that lighting for theater and lighting for corporate events is similar. I'd love to hear the ways in which it's similar and the ways in which it's different in terms of the process, final result, or collaboration. You know, whatever metrics you want to use.

HOWARD: Yeah, you used the word collaboration. In my mind, it's all about collaboration. Whether it's a corporate project, a museum project, a restaurant, a piece of theater, or ballet, it's all about communication with the people. You're making this project, this art, and this end product with the set designer, and the lighting designer working very closely together in the corporate world.

There's also a lot of video production and most of the sets are video surfaces. Video surfaces are sources of light, and therefore the lighting designer has to work with the video content folks and the video director to see what's on stage at a corporate event. Juxtaposing that to the subject of the shot which is the presenter is really the collaboration part that we need to work together on.

The other really strong difference is most corporate events are shot for the camera and the live performance, but by in large, theater production is for the human eye, not the camera. Therefore, the lighting for a corporate event has to be such that the camera captures that picture really well, and the color temperature of the lighting on that presenter has to match the color temperature of the video surface behind them. If not, one or the other will look wrong.

Maybe the corporate branding would look wrong on the screen. We can't have that. We also can't have the presenter looking orange on camera, so in my mind, the corporate event projects that we do are TV shows really. They're shot for the camera, whether it's webcast or archival footage. There is an audience in the space, so you have to toad that line because there are 500-50,000 people in the venue. They have to look at a pleasing picture also, but what really lasts is the video. It really needs to look right.

JEREMY: So job one of lighting is to make the presenters well-lit so that they look right on the camera and that the people in the auditorium can see them. I think people come and notice a certain amount of ballyhooing and colored moving lights that are crisscrossing and zigzagging along the stage.

There's a certain amount of energy that the lighting creates, but what else are you trying to do with lighting other than those two things? What is it that lighting really adds to the event?

HOWARD: It can add a lot of drama to the event at a very big venue. There could be a performer or a presenter that's one person on the stage, and therefore it can be a dramatic effect where one person is picked out of a space, whether they're in the audience, on the satellite stage, or on the main stage in a place that.

A presenter isn't necessarily sanding for the whole rest of the presentation. You can create drama, energy, like you mentioned ballyhoo, and play on. That sort of stuff is about creating energy for what's about to come.

It also can throw focus, right? If there's a presenter standing in a dark area and someone else is presenting, they can throw the focus. I think there are really three ways to add lighting for effect with energy, focus, and drama.

JEREMY: I would imagine that a lot of these corporate events are very similar. How many have you done? Must’ve been hundreds, right?

HOWARD: Oh, yeah. I don't know how many. I tend to do many various projects in terms of lighting, so corporate events are some of that. There are people that do corporate event lighting. That's all they do. I like to think that doing all the other things leads to a more well-rounded designer.

I can bring a museum installation or an architectural project to the aesthetic of a corporate event. I think that's a long way of saying that I do a lot but not as much as I could.

JEREMY: Fair enough, but you know, a lot of these corporate events, from a lighting perspective, I imagine require the same types of things. You can come in knowing what the drill is going to be, but I imagine it's more fun for you when there's a new idea and something you haven't seen before; something that does have a lot of drama and energy.

Can you think of a particular moment or sequence at a corporate event that just worked incredibly well; the lights helped or the way it was created that you just thought was super effective?

HOWARD: Yeah, there are a few for me. The best design is not necessarily lighting design, but in general, the design of the event is a collaborative thing. It's all the design elements that worked together.

I did a show for Proscenium, years ago, and the set was very challenging to light. It was a lot of architecture. The venue was very low. Therefore, the rigging was a big challenge, and the set had a lot of screens at the stage level. There was this roof line element framing the stage, and it was so up there amongst the speakers, the audio, and all the lighting. It was incredibly hard to light, and we did a lot of drawing trying to figure out how we can put the lights in the right places to light the scenic element.

When it all was said and done, that scenic element was well-lit. It was doing what it was there to do. It was a branding element. It was a roof line of a house, and it looked exactly like the rendering. That was a really challenging project.

Another project that I've done that was super challenging was a thrust stage that was an LED floor, an LED screen, and it was a large stage. Therefore, the presenter had to be well-lit on all sides because there are cameras everywhere. We couldn't wash out the LED screens with a big old wash of light. We wanted the presenter to be isolated in the area that they're presenting in so that you could see the video on the floor surface and also on the rear and side screens. They were challenging projects, that's for sure.

JEREMY: We don't make it easy on you at Proscenium.

[JEREMY LAUGHS]

HOWARD: No, you don't. That's why I love working with you guys. There's a lot of corporate events that we do and that are one screen, three screens, there's a small stage with the presenter on it, and that's what you do and that's fine.

When the projects get more challenging and more creative, that's when it gets fun.

JEREMY: You mentioned the challenge of low ceilings, can you talk a little bit more about that? I think when it comes to picking a venue some people might not notice or might not think about the challenge of low ceilings. Can you just talk about why having an event in a space with low ceilings is tricky?

HOWARD: Good lighting to a presenter is two factors. You have to see the person and you can't blind them with lights in the eyes of presenters, especially when they're trying to read a prompter monitor. It's important for us to get the proper angle to the person's face so that we can see them and there are not very steep lights so that their eyes are visible.

Again, we're doing these projects for the camera, so if you're standing 150 feet away from a presenter on a stage, you don't see that there are eye socket shadows. The camera can see that immediately, and then, that picture is IMAG into a screen and that picture is now 20 feet tall and everyone can see it.

BETHANY: This is behind the scenes Bethany breaking in with a fact check. IMAG stands for image magnification. It refers to large-scale video projection that allows audience members in the furthest seats to see details such as the performer's, body language, and facial expression details they would otherwise miss.

HOWARD: Eye socket shadows are really a result of light that is too steep. Deer in the headlights, as I like to call it, is a result of light that is not steep enough. With a low ceiling, the lights have to be at the maximum trim or height of the ballroom or venue. Oftentimes, there's a very limited, written amount of rigging points that you can put into a venue like that.

It's a challenge, definitely. It's not insurmountable. We've done shows in ballrooms and they look good. Again, it's a collaboration between the creatives and where the stage is placed in the room, and therefore, taking lighting into consideration is an important part when you're first planning that meeting and that ballroom that has a low ceiling.

JEREMY: That's very useful advice. Speaking of advice, do you have any advice? Sometimes even when there are high ceilings, a presenter or an executive will get on stage, and they're just not used to being in an environment like that with all these lights on them. They get thrown. They come in and are shocked that the lights are so bright in their eyes.

Is there anything we can do about this? Is there anything that a presenter can do to mitigate against that?

HOWARD: The bright lights in a presenter's eyes is, in my opinion, a result of laziness. The technology exists, camera-wise, for a very low light level for a camera to pick up an image 10 years ago if that wasn't the case.

If the light is too bright, it can always be taken down. That level of light can always be dimmed. There is a point. You have to make a choice. What's the priority here; The presenter's comfort, and therefore the light is coming down in level because we know that the video engineer can adapt to that light level.

If the priority is what the viewers in the room see, then we have to make that choice. The light will need to be up higher because from the back row of a 10,000-seat room. A person's not going to be able to see the presenter that's 200-300 feet.

There's nothing really a presenter can do. If they're uncomfortable, they're not going to be comfortable doing the presentation. It's my job to make them comfortable. That's your job as the creative director or a person that's interacting with the presenter to put them at ease. I can take the light up or down, and I can talk to the video engineer and say, “Don't be lazy, we can make this work.”

JEREMY: It's interesting how sometimes it appears to be an issue for one department when in fact it might be an issue for another department in terms of how you best solve it.

You mentioned before when you were talking about low ceilings, how if you are going into a venue with low ceilings, and during that site visit is the time to start thinking about what kind of scenery you going to have. How is the lighting going to play with that scenery? How do we make this room work?

I'm curious if you have other thoughts or suggestions in terms of ways clients or agencies should be thinking about lighting ahead of time. What can we be doing on our side to make your life either easier, to make the show better, or to make the lighting better?

HOWARD: I think it's a really good question. I think the answer is that each show is a different beast and needs thinking about lighting in the same way as you think about video production. For example, these days, most of the scenery is video screens and branding is super important. A lot of the messaging is coming from video surfaces, but the person that's on the stage needs to look good also.

One of the pitfalls that I see a lot is video imagery that is either largely white or largely black. They’re both fine in certain circumstances, but when a stage is very close to a video surface, especially an LED surface that is largely white and that person is standing 10 feet in front of that largely white surface, the camera sees a lot of white light in the back. It could be very difficult for the engineer, the light, and the designer to make that look good because to balance that camera shot between a very white surface and a presenter requires the video surface to be taken down in intensity, drastically. A lot of light on the presenter is not a great combination.

The video starts to look not good, and the presenter starts to feel uncomfortable because we're having to put so much light on that person to make the camera shot balanced. A black background is also very difficult. The light travels in a straight line. If the light is coming over their head and it's hitting a black surface behind them, that's not great. It makes that graphic not look so good because we're corrupting that black image with some white light. I think that's really a good thing to think about.

JEREMY: Yeah, that's great advice. I'm sure people are not thinking about that at all.

HOWARD: Yeah, sometimes there's no way around it. The room is a fixed size. The number of attendees is maxing out the room. You have to get as many chairs in the space as you can, and therefore the screen has to be pushed right up against the back of the stage.

JEREMY: We were talking about the technology of lighting before, and obviously, this is a field where technology really changed the business a lot. I think back to my days at the Atlantic Theater in the early 90s, and it was not the same set of tools.

I'm curious, is there any technology either that you've worked with recently that you've really loved and thought these things are terrific for whatever reason or technology that you've seen that's coming out and haven't had a chance to use yet?

HOWARD: It used to be a follow spot, meaning a light that follows a person around wherever they go. This was a big thing that took a lot of power and a person had to manually move that light to wherever that person on the stage goes. Therefore, you could only put those lights in certain places.

What has happened now is there's the technology that's called ground control follow spots. Basically, what you can do is turn virtually any automated lighting fixture into a follow spot, and that is still operated by a person manually. There's a camera looking at the stage and looking where the light is directed, but that operator is backstage somewhere with a monitor seeing where the light is going and following the person on the stage that they're assigned to follow. That’s like the genius as far as I'm concerned.

JEREMY: That is very cool. Can you give me a case for a corporate event for that? Does that get on the CEO and follow her around wherever she goes? We know she's always perfectly lit.

HOWARD: Yeah, that's right. You could definitely do that. You can have a backlight and a front light assigned to a person, the CEO, and she can go basically wherever she wants. Therefore, that person is isolated in a pool of light that moves with her, and we don't have to have a big wash of light on the stage.

The other option is a big wash of light because some presenters like to walk and talk at will, and it's not choreographed in any way. They just want to walk wherever they feel. If a part of the audience is reacting to what they say, she wants to walk over and acknowledge that, let's say. This follow-spot technology can go basically go wherever she wants, and the light will follow her. To me, it makes the show look better. There's a lot less light on the stage all the time.

It's more dramatic because there's less light on the stage. You could put a wash of light on the stage. that's a beautiful brand color, for example, and a white pool of light will follow that CEO wherever that person goes. It's branded, it's colorful, and it's very flexible.

JEREMY: I love that. Alright, I'd love to move on to our Lightning Round.

[AUDIBLE THUNDER]

This is three questions we ask all of our guests. The first one is, who's your biggest get? A speaker, entertainer, or subject matter expert that you would either love to see at a live event or someone who you would love to coach.

HOWARD: I would love an older person such as my grandfather or your grandfather to moderate a panel with leaders of the world now. What does a person that's been dead for 30 years say to Barack Obama, Biden, Trump, or Putin about the way the world is operating now? I would love to hear that perspective.

JEREMY: I think about that all the time. How much the world has changed and what people from long ago would think of the world today. Yeah, so to see that actually play out would be incredible.

Second question, what is one thing you wish presenters did more of or less of?

HOWARD: Selfishly, if someone is saying, I'm going to stand in this spot, and you can take all the lights out in other spots. When we get to the show and they wander around, I'm like frantically trying to put lights on. I wish they wouldn't do that, but that doesn't happen often.

JEREMY: That’s very funny. Last question, what is something, could be a book, a movie, a song, whatever you like, that was a big influence on you and particularly, if possible, influenced your professional career?

HOWARD: Honestly, the biggest influence on my career is when I was in high school. I was a theater kid, and I got interested in doing plays at school. I got the soundtrack for the original Broadway production of Chorus Line. I knew every word, every lyric, and every emotion of that show. I went to see that show and it, frankly, changed my life.

The other show that I learned at that time in my life was Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, which I'm thrilled that there's going to be a revival of it. I can't wait to see it.

BETHANY: This is behind the scenes Bethany breaking in with a fact check. Dancin’ is a Tony Award-winning musical tribute to the art of dance. The show will receive its first-ever Broadway revival in the spring of 2023.

HOWARD: These shows are both very heavily reliant on lighting and those changed my life. Still to this day, I'm in awe of those folks that created those shows.

JEREMY: Wow. That's a great answer. Believe it or not, Howard, I'm somewhat in awe of you. I've been an admirer of you and your work for decades. I'm so delighted when I get the chance to collaborate with you. I just think you are a genius at what you do, and I'm delighted that you took the time to talk to us today. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

HOWARD: My pleasure. Flattering won’t get you everywhere.

JEREMY: I actually do have one bonus question which I don't think you and I have ever talked about. I don't know your feelings on this and so you may not want to talk about it, which is totally fine. I'm curious to hear any stories that you could share about Spider-Man, that just must have been nuts.

BETHANY: This is behind the scenes Bethany breaking in with a fact check. Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark was a musical with rock music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge. Following numerous challenges and delays, the show opened in 2011. The production was described as the most technically complex show in Broadway's history with 27 aerial sequences of characters flying and engaging in aerial combat.

HOWARD: You talked about one of the questions, have you ever seen something fail or gone go wrong? Yeah, on that show I did. Some of them were very tragic events and almost fatal, so that sort of stuff sticks with you for a while. That project was very near and dear to my heart. It was fraught with so much peril, but starting out with so much promise, it was very sad to see how it turned out.

Technically, the technology that was used on that show was earth-shattering in many ways. The design, whether you liked it or not, was spectacular. It was video, lighting, costume, and everything was at the top of the game, and in the end, it didn't make a show. That was the problem, right? I don't know if you saw it, but I did.

JEREMY: I did.

HOWARD: It was sad. Honestly, we worked very hard on it, literally for years, and in the end, it wasn't as good as it could have been. Bono, The Edge, Julie Taymour, Don Holder, and George Sippin were brilliant names in the theater. In the end, it wasn't as good as it could have been and that was sad.

JEREMY: From a technology perspective, has there been a show since then that has been more technologically innovative?

HOWARD: Yeah, there are shows that are continuing to break new ground. They always say that concert touring, music, and entertainment creates the technology or nurtures the technology because they have the budget for it. Then that trickles down to the theater and the corporate events, but I don't think there has been anything that has been quite as groundbreaking.

I'll just say, I was a part of another show that was very similar to Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, which was called EFX in Las Vegas, starring Michael Crawford. It was a similar situation. The design was amazing. Money was virtually no object, and in the end, the design was plentiful. The creative show wasn't there. There was a show and it was loosely based on various things, and there was a star, Michael Crawford, at the time that had just finished his run, Phantom of the Opera. It was a big project and there was no show there, so it was sad.

JEREMY: It's got to be on the page first. If it isn’t on the page, it isn’t on the stage.

HOWARD: It’s true.

JEREMY: Well, getting to talk with Howard about lighting was so illuminating. For me, there were tons of takeaways, but these are the four tops.

                     • Number four, venues with low ceilings make it challenging for lighting to make the presenters look good on camera, so have those conversations early on.

                     • Number three, if a presenter is uncomfortable because the lights are too bright, the lighting may be able to come down so long as the video can                                                accommodate the decreased level.

                     • Number two, be careful about putting presenters in front of video content that is overly white or black. It can make it very hard to make that look good on                               camera.

                     • Number one, lighting has to work for the camera and the live audience. In addition to creating energy, lighting can create emotion and put the focus where                                you want it.

Look, I could talk about this stuff all day. If you want to talk to us about today's topic or anything about live events, check out our episode notes for more information or just go to proscenium.com to drop us a line. Send us a guest suggestion or tell us why you would make a good guest. We would love to hear from you because at Proscenium, we help presenters do their best in front of their most important audiences. As we like to say, we help brands perform. I have a sneaking suspicion that we can help your brand perform.