GOAL Quayaquil
The above photo was taken by Tarah Mayes covering for The Fish Site during Global Aquaculture Alliance’s GOAL Conference, this year in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The event and conference was in Dublin last year and will be in India next year. It moves each year to a seafood industry city of importance to discuss global aquaculture, leadership, and sustainability among other hot topics. You can read more about her article that accompanies the photo here.
What is in the photo that Tarah took is James Wright moderating a panel discussion on biotechnology in front of one of the video backdrops I created for this years GOAL conference. I don’t get to see it live, so when I see photos of the backdrop I just think how cool it looks as well as the size of it when it gets displayed in front of a live audience.
The Concept
The watercolor concept came from James Wright and Steve Hedlund from The Global Aquaculture Alliance and I was excited to work to make their concept come to life. A brief overview of the process is I start the look using watercolor brushes in Photoshop, then bring it over to After Effects to do all of the animating and painting. It finally ends up in Premiere Pro where it gets overlaid on top of video footage of Ecuador. Add some music and export!
The Resolution for the Main Stage Display
The resolution for the main stage video display was 1680x720px, from what I have found is called a Cinemascope 21:9 ratio. Super wide-screen. It looked small on my MacBook, but when I saw the photos I couldn’t believe the size of it. I thought the colors popped nicely too. The watercolor would loop in and out once a minute while the background footage of Ecuador would slowly time-lapse throughout a cloudy day.
Total Videos Created
I think we finished with 10 videos altogether, but those 10 also needed to be sized to fit on the HD TV screens at 1920×1080. So around 20 videos altogether. Total coverage on all of their screens. Awesome. I’ve seen other photos where you can see multiple tv’s with my videos on them which is cool to see.
The videos themselves were to inform, entertain and enhance the overall look of the show and become an actual piece of the set. We had the video montage of Ecuador with the watercolor flowing in to reveal both the GAA logo as well as this years GOAL Guayaquil logo in the yellow, blue and red. The purplish blue overlay was borrowed from the website and print design pieces. We also had sponsor, break, lunch, party and award ceremony announcement videos using the same watercolor theme with conference hashtag and conference tagline. From what I’ve seen from photos it looked very nice and was told the videos were well received. Very cool.
India is Next
We’re already starting on the GAA’s videos for Chennai, India for next years event. We did do a quick reveal video of the location to excite the crowd for next years event. We may have even nailed down the concept for next year too so I’m already excited about putting together those videos. Big thanks to James and Steve!
Use Video as Part of an Event
I feel these videos enhanced the overall look and feel of the event as well as informed the audience where to go and when. These videos were never intended for YouTube, so they are hidden on my channel, but I’d like to let people know that video is not only for YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia but they can be part of an event, not just something in the background. Very exciting way to use video.