Behind the scenes at Hollywood’s annual Emmy Awards broadcast is an army of international press. This includes the high profile E! Online, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, reporters from The New York Times, The London Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, KNX, KTLA, live radio reporters, bloggers and untold number of photographers, videographers, freelancers and assistants. All of them are competing to capture the story, interview the winners and get the message out. The gauntlet of press is housed in a series of large tents creating a labyrinth of temporary photo and interview studios, press briefing rooms, photo-editing rooms, make-up areas and sponsored photo opportunities. Once the broadcast starts the attention of the press swiftly gravitates from the show and focuses on the winners as they are paraded by for interviews, photos and video.

The Lawrence Company of Los Angeles, CA is responsible for programming a network of large plasma HD displays distributed throughout this press area. As the broadcast launches, two feeds are sent to side-by-side plasmas presenting an alternative “narrowcasting” version of the Emmys. This version is designed specifically to keep the swarming media immediately apprised of the on-going events. The alternative version couples a live broadcast feed with simultaneous graphic updates on awards and winners along with tallies for networks, cable outlets and individual programs. In addition factoids highlighting the recipients and programs are sprinkled into the presentation as winners are announced.

To build visual consistency with the broadcast TLC artists team with the on-air designers to develop a graphic treatment. Though the graphics have different objectives the style, design and execution are to be as similar as possible. This includes animation, transitions and speed of display of winners.

“In the past, programming and operating these rapidly changing graphics which matched the look and production values of the on-air graphics demanded a great deal of technology”, says Daniel Mueller, Owner, The Lawrence Company. “This year we used PowerPoint and OfficeFX Presenter to create and deliver those graphics – all in HD (720p). We had three machines running with one set-up to display updated tally changes. A switcher allowed for seamless changes between sources. OfficeFX Presenter worked flawlessly through the 3+ hour event.”

“There were skeptics that wondered whether a PowerPoint plug-in could perform at this level -but seeing is believing. Once they saw the graphics quality and content control flexibility, they were convinced. From our perspective the reduction in technical complexity that OfficeFX Presenter enables is a big step forward. It enabled our team to deliver the show in tuxedoes with our hands tied behind our cummerbunds. :-) ”

Next Case Study >>