“Some Guy From the Crew” Part 2: Live events with Cameron Magee

Mikey Mioduski (00:00)

Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller Study Club. Molly, we have some dude from the crew who's gonna join us today. Just kidding. This is our Ask an Event Guy professional event agency owner, Cameron McGee from Avad3 is with us. Such a popular series, Molly, that we're like, we're having Cameron back, because there is way more meat on the bone as we talk about the importance of events.

 

Cameron Magee (00:15)

you

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:21)

He's back.

 

Yes!

 

Mikey Mioduski (00:30)

and the connection between great presentations, right?

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:33)

Yeah, that's right, Mikey. We thought to ourselves, what

 

happens behind stage when events, when big events happen, when big presentations are happening? The AV team really holds so much together and friend of the pod, owner of Avad3, some guy from the crew, Cameron McGee is back for his series to let us know what is going on in the AV world. Welcome, welcome, Cameron. Good day.

 

Cameron Magee (00:57)

I love it because you guys

 

when you first asked me if I'd become on

 

I felt all honored, like you're pitching to the expert. Like we're gonna go, now here's the weather with Cameron McGee, or you're an expert. And then I immediately felt like, no, I'm really just some guy from the crew. We just pulled some guy from backstage and said, hey, will you talk to us for a minute? So I'm happy to be some guy from the crew and kind of share that on the scene's perspective from a high level with y'all. So thanks for having me.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:09)

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:20)

the EventPro correspondent.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:21)

Of yeah.

 

Thank you for joining this series. Thanks for helping create the series, co-create. I mean, yeah, and that's, we said this last time, if you haven't listened to the episode with Cameron, go ahead, I'll link it in the spice cabinet, but we talked about how that was part of your ethos too of like just, you're some guy from the crew, you're the leader of of course your organization and that kind of thing. And you, would say you're an expert in the event tech space.

 

and helping speakers set up and get their tech specs right and that their slides run smoothly and the teleprompter go, the sounds, the lights, there's so much that goes into it. And a lot of people are super, super intimidated by event spaces. So it's just really, it's cool that you're just some guy from the crew helping people put this together, which is really, really rad.

 

Mikey Mioduski (02:05)

What are we digging into today?

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:08)

Yes. OK, so if we last last time we talked, Cameron, we talked about rehearsals. We know it's a huge, huge priority for your company. And we talked about what speakers can expect going into an event. What's the typical run of show? ⁓ Just getting ready for that big like day ⁓ to put it on. And today we were thinking maybe we talk about what happens on the actual day, right? What happens if things go wrong? What's the ideal kind of set up for?

 

Cameron Magee (02:10)

you you

 

.

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:37)

an AV team, event, working with an event team, what are the roles that people have for

 

a 10 person event, a 50 person event, a 500 person event, what are the trends going on right now? We've got Cameron walking around in the shop down in Alabama, so cool. ⁓ So yeah, I think that's what we're gonna get into today.

 

Cameron Magee (03:03)

I was in the shop and it was so loud. said, you know what? It's too loud. I thought it be so in the shop and I was like, it immediately got so loud. I like, I'm going to be responsible and go back in the quiet area. So now I'm inside.

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:06)

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (03:09)

No, it's cool.

 

I kind want to have a little clip of

 

you just touring us through the shop. That was kind of perfect timing actually. ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:20)

Yeah. I think Cameron's

 

pissed that you called it Alabama, but it's Arkansas. Do not cross those wires.

 

Cameron Magee (03:28)

It's awesome.

 

Molly Geoghegan (03:30)

my God, I'll edit that, I'll edit that. I'll edit that. You know,

 

it's funny, I've done that, and my mom's from Mobile, so I am sorry. It's funny though, because that is totally like a little dyslexic thing where I see the A and the A and one comes out, yeah. But don't worry, I got a soft spot in my heart. ⁓ For that part of the country. Okay.

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:37)

yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (03:43)

Every day. It's good. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:44)

Yeah, everyone does it. ⁓

 

Yeah, so, and

 

sorry John, but yeah, Molly, for what, I wanna tee up Cameron now just to start getting into it. What do you want, what can I ask maybe?

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:07)

Let's

 

go with the, you know, what goes into the actual show when the audience is there. We're talking about the room layout and that kind of thing first. Yeah, those pieces. So I was saying, yeah, okay, so last time we covered, yeah, we talked about rehearsals, importance of rehearsals, and really what to expect for people coming up into the big day of the event. But now, like, the event is here. What does the room look like? What's going on with the team? What are the different roles and the ideal roles?

 

Mikey Mioduski (04:11)

Okay, all right. Okay, cool. All right.

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:36)

that people are fulfilling day of and what happens if things go wrong as well? So yeah, Cameron, what goes into the actual show when the audience is there? What's the room looking like? What's going on?

 

Cameron Magee (04:46)

Yeah, this is so great to talk about. Last time we jumped in with rehearsals and I want to kind of jump forward now to the show, but also want to kind of rewind to some decisions that were probably made six months before that moment. I don't know, the audience is probably super diverse of who tunes into this, but

 

It's just super rare to get to ⁓ draw attention to some of these little decisions that are made early that people may not know how to put their finger on it when they're in the room. Even a designer may say, a graphic designer may say like, hey, this didn't quite feel right. And this is the decision we made four months ago when you chose to face the room this way in the ballroom instead of this room, this chandelier, it affected this rigging, it affected this trim height. And there's all this domino effect that happens. ⁓ I often feel like ⁓

 

architects need to interview more people before they draw buildings. I sometimes will joke about that when we're doing a walkthrough to say, man, just, I'm sure this person's brilliant. They probably have six degrees in architecture, but I don't think they've ever been on a loading dock before. And so I love being on this show to come in fresh off the loading dock literally today and talk about little things that decisions that you can make on a site visit, whether you're, you know, on your corporate internal events team.

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:38)

Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (06:02)

or you're coming from an agency side, whatever the site is, to think about when it comes to production in the room. One of the things I want to talk about was room layout a little bit. So often, one of the first things people will do when they're doing a site visit is they'll ask the hotel salesperson, hey, what's capacity of this room? And it's a little bit of an amateur mistake to actually listen to that number too literally. The first thing you should do is cut 20 % out of that number to allow

 

Molly Geoghegan (06:09)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (06:31)

reasonable footprint for production. When you see these beautiful photos on LinkedIn or Instagram of these massive productions, there has to be a backstage to make that happen. If you've ever been to a Broadway show, there's a whole other building back there of space, but you don't really experience that unless you stay after the show and they pull the batons and everything out you're like, well, that's a lot of space for Lion King. It takes a lot of space to do production. And so one of the first things on the first site visit.

 

Mikey Mioduski (06:42)

Mm-hmm.

 

Molly Geoghegan (06:45)

Right.

 

Cameron Magee (06:58)

Anytime I can go on a site visit with a client, we just went on one, I've got another one next week. As soon as the hotel salesperson says the room capacity, it's just pull about 20 % off of that. That's kind of the first step. People don't really think about that. ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (07:11)

Yeah, room

 

for production. yeah, camera like walking through some, I'm sure that's when you find these, oh gosh, didn't see that in the specs, but like we were just in San Francisco for an event. had just like, the rooms are so wide. And then in the middle of the rooms were all these like massive pillars. And like, I don't know if that was an earthquake thing or just like a 70s vibe, but these pillars like were horrible for the audience to like look around.

 

Cameron Magee (07:31)

Yes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (07:39)

Massive like complication when they were trying to figure out. Okay, where do we actually put these screens? Because half the room can't see them clearly ⁓ So what do you what's your due diligence process like or that you ask or that you encourage other event planners to ask when they're considering room layout? Besides the 20 % which is brilliant

 

Cameron Magee (07:46)

That's right.

 

Molly Geoghegan (07:47)

Right, right.

 

Cameron Magee (07:56)

I'm sure that every event, yeah,

 

the 20 % is just a simple rule to remember, just cut the capacity by 20%. I'm sure that, I bet every vendor on the event squad that you're assembling for your big day, I bet every vendor says we should have been on the site visit. I bet every vendor says you should have let us pick the venue. Of course, some guy from the crew is gonna come on the show and be like, we should have been on the site visit. ⁓ The florist maybe wants to be on the site visit, the balloon animal wants to be on the site visit. It's amazing how many vendors are on these shows now.

 

Molly Geoghegan (08:23)

Everybody.

 

Cameron Magee (08:25)

But more than the balloon animal guy the guy from the production crew really should be on the side visit because Most event budgets one of the largest line items is production and I often apologize for how expensive quality production is you get what you pay for but I am sorry that it costs so darn much But what's really sad is waste is is budget that gets wasted because in that instance just that quick story you're telling Mikey

 

They probably had to do double the screens. was probably like no matter where you sit, there's a pillar in the way. So we're gonna do a second screen on this wall or on the back of the room. And so now you're spending double for something that didn't have to be that way. But so often people don't book production until about 90 days out. That's our average is 97 or something days. It's between 90 and 100 days out is typically when we get booked. But the best clients are looking at production 11 months out so that we're helping pick the room in the venue. And the best clients are looking more like two to three years out if they're rolling.

 

Molly Geoghegan (09:15)

you

 

Cameron Magee (09:22)

forward with their planning, they're saying, hey, we narrowed it down to these two venues. Because depending on the union rules, there's different labor, there's different jurisdictions, there's all sorts of things that go into labor and waste that you don't see. So I wanna talk about design, I wanna talk about screens and all the artistic and beautiful things today, but a lot of those decisions are actually made way before you get to that point. And they're often made by people that aren't informed about production. And that's why I was joking about the architects.

 

Just make sure on your site visit you've got at least one nerd like me that's looking at the ceiling and thinking about rake points if you can.

 

Molly Geoghegan (09:57)

Yes,

 

exactly. Yeah, first big takeaway. Think about the room layout for sure. we've heard that from just presentation coaches as well. Like if you're able to get into the room you're going to be talking in ahead of time, you know where you can kind of pace as well. And then if you know where the screen is going to be placed, you can practice like moving your head there. That's like learning beta for your like muscles may seem like silly. But if you do that once versus doing it zero times, it will feel different for sure. I also

 

I'm curious about ⁓ sound in some of these spaces. Does that give you like a bit of a preview into like how things do you play from the speakers? Like know what speakers you're gonna set up, test how the sound will echo? Cause some places, God forbid have no noise cancellation at all, right? And so the acoustics can be really bouncy and stuff. I'm thinking of Julian Treasures, Ted Talk Mikey, where he talks about the architecture of sound in a lot of places that just isn't, we aren't thinking about how we receive information. It can be really over-simulating sometimes.

 

Cameron Magee (10:56)

It really is. we were on the most recent site visit I was on. That was actually their chief complaint. That's actually why I got invited to that site visit. said, hey, we did the show last year. And ⁓ the sound was crazy. It was not that the sound system was inadequate or the audio technician was underqualified or anything. had nothing but good things to say about their previous crew. But they had switched to us, which is great. We're happy to be there. And they'd kind of learned their lesson to bring us on the site visit. And so just with a couple of just quick

 

Molly Geoghegan (11:15)

Yeah, totally.

 

Cameron Magee (11:24)

choices on site I said you know you have the stage facing left to right we need to face right to left in here and then for the expo floor that's on this side of the air wall can we make the entrance come from the west instead of the south because then and they're immediately like is that gonna fix it it's like yeah that's like 80 % of the problem right there and just little things like that but those those plans get so baked in once the sponsors have seen the expo floor and they've decided where they want to be and the GS you know the doors and once the fire marshals approved it all these things they start to lock you in.

 

And so some of those broad strokes coming early is definitely a good

 

Mikey Mioduski (11:57)

Yeah, speaking of lock you in, I've done a couple events now that we put on and they definitely were pushing the in-house team. And it's something to consider, they're already there, you know, but certainly you all, you may have a different perspective on that. Like when is it right to go in-house and when is it right to pull in an outside production agency?

 

Molly Geoghegan (11:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, makes sense.

 

Cameron Magee (12:20)

Yeah, I dog on in-house so much. There's so much content on the internet of me dogging on in-house. I feel bad about it. But it's because most of the shows we do would not be compatible for in-house. Like we exist because there's a lot of shows that don't make sense for in-house. And so I spend a lot of time, I'm not trying to be mean, but I dog on the in-house accidentally overly because people need to understand there is a place for it. ⁓ But it would be for a smaller event or a very non-technical event. And we get...

 

Mikey Mioduski (12:22)

Ha

 

Molly Geoghegan (12:25)

No.

 

Cameron Magee (12:48)

asked to bid on shows all the time, we'll get an RFP or something and we'll look at it we'll say, you know what, actually, this is a good fit for the in-house. So we're not even gonna bid on this one. We actually recommend that you use the in-house because your needs are relatively simple or there's parameters that start to make sense for the in-house. But I venture to think that most of your audience who's investing in their, this is almost like continuing education of podcasts like this, they're a more sophisticated group that cares about the details. We often say that it's their biggest day of the year.

 

And so if it's your biggest day of the year, typically the in-house is someone who, you know, maybe used to be, you know, who was the valet guy last week and now he's running the sound in the back of your meeting. And so I just have a bad reputation, I suppose, of dogging on the in-house. ⁓ But they do lock you into it and they lock you into it real early. So it's very wise as you're looking at your contracting to be very careful. We won a job yesterday.

 

And the client is still dealing with the hotel basically whining about losing with the in-house and saying, well, we're going to have to talk about security now. And it's like, well, that's going to be an $1,100 line item. And we're not worried about, know, they were going to throw in the security if you use the in-house. And now you're going have to pay for it. he's like, isn't that $1,100? But there's so much pressure on got to go in-house because they get a commission from that. And so they're driven to do that. But I'm a pretty big advocate for don't trust your biggest day of the year to

 

to that crew and find a production company like Avod 3, it doesn't have to be us, but like us, that you can take us with you when your event strategically moves to appeal to different attendees.

 

Mikey Mioduski (14:29)

Yeah, and as a former valet guy myself, I can attest that I can't do it the way about three does it. Respect. Yeah, Collected a lot of name tags in my day. ⁓ Okay, then like, you know, we're designers here at Ghost Ranch. We're always thinking about, we think in 16 by nine shapes typically, but we love.

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:30)

Yeah, such a good note.

 

forgot about that.

 

Cameron Magee (14:36)

Hahaha

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:37)

that's good part of the Mikey lore. Valet Mikey.

 

look.

 

Mikey Mioduski (14:55)

when an event planner is like, we're going wide or we're doing these multi-screen things. So yeah, what's the latest, greatest and like best practice when thinking about screens and screen shape?

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:59)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (15:07)

Yeah, I love this. And it's trendy right now, but it's relatively timeless too. There have been unusual screen shapes for a long time. LED is a trend and so people think, these new LED walls and these tiles and it's like Legos and it's super fun. And we own a ton of LED, we use it every day. But projection mapping has been around for a while too. And people kind of forget that, yeah, projector, can just, it's kind of a spray and pray situation. You just kind of spray it on whichever wall you want to and you can shape it and do different things.

 

And so unusual screen aspect ratios have been around for a while. think one of the things, we're recording this in November of 2025. And one of the things that I've seen different this year than I did three years ago was ⁓ it used to be almost every show, and I'm talking with my hands, sorry for the audio only folks, but it used to be almost every show was two 16 by nine screens with a stage in the middle. That was almost every meeting you saw was just two 16 by nine aspect ratio screens, not necessarily 16 feet by nine feet, but.

 

16 by nine ratio screens left and right in a stage in the middle. And when LED really started taking popularity three to four years ago, the opposite happened. We just started seeing one big LED wall in the middle and that same thing over and over and over. And so for so many events, ⁓ big corporate meeting does this big LinkedIn. We're super proud of our new, we just finished our big recap event and you could pretty much just change the logo on the screen. Cause it's like, yeah, it's a hundred foot wide, 20 foot tall LED wall.

 

Molly Geoghegan (16:32)

Mm.

 

Cameron Magee (16:34)

and you're in Vegas and they were in LA and it's the same thing. And so I think that has gotten a bit overdone. What's been good this year is people have really started thinking more creatively. You have to realize that most production companies, most nerds like myself are engineers at heart more than we're artists. And so the engineer I think kicks in and says, will be simple, we'll just do one big flat wall. But after doing that, know, 100 events a year for three years, finally the industry is saying, hey, you know, we could do, we could kind of break these up. We could do some odd aspect ratios.

 

And I would just say again, November 2025, projection's not dead. We still use it all the time as a helpful tool. Because LED is the new thing, I have so many clients saying, hey, make sure our show has LED, like make sure we use LED in the budget. I'm like, great, we totally have it. And over here, we're also gonna do projection. And it's almost like they're like, now is that old or like is that old technology? But if it is a 16 by nine slide that's projected on a white piece of it, it doesn't matter, know? And so,

 

Molly Geoghegan (17:30)

would

 

Cameron Magee (17:32)

we're still using a lot of projection because it's more cost effective in some situations. It's not necessarily just a whale of a difference, but it's more cost effective. And if you don't need it to be LED, you don't have to make it LED with the rigging weight and the labor. So yeah, a little bit of a tangent there, but LED alive and well, some trends getting overdone, but love it from a creativity standpoint. We have some custom made LED tiles that are in odd shapes. We have some triangles.

 

Mikey Mioduski (17:43)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (18:02)

We couldn't find triangles anywhere in the country and our designer was wanting to do these like 45 degree edges on all their renderings. And so we just bought some triangles. had to custom fabricate it to like match everything, but they'll be here ⁓ Friday. And I'm super excited to start putting them in. And then we have a curved ones that we can kind of make like an S shape with that have been really fun. ⁓ But yeah, you can just do a lot with that now. And so I hope that people are doing a lot with it.

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:05)

Ooh.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:06)

you

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:16)

That's so cool.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:29)

That's cool.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:29)

No, that's cool. We wanted to ask you about trends, so it's cool to hear about these screen trends and just knowing that there's so many, like, I'm just thinking of, like, creative stage, like, you're a stage, part stage designer too with this, you know? And do you, how often do you find yourself kind of being, almost consulting kind of with folks about that when they're not, like, they're like, how should we set this up? What do you think? Especially in a new space.

 

Cameron Magee (18:52)

I would say, you know, I don't talk money publicly too much, but this is a helpful case to just put a dollar figure to it. I would say if someone's only spending $50,000 on AV for their three day event, there's probably not a lot of design happening. It probably just looks like a two screen stage in the middle room. And so in those cases, yeah, we're quote unquote, just the AV team. Like we'll draw the room for you and submit it for Fire Marshall and work with the hotel on where the tables and chairs go. But we're not designing much. But once it's north of a hundred thousand dollars, once there's actual

 

budget and some weight and gravity to it, then we really are doing some really cool designs. ⁓ that's the thing of LED. If you're just using LED to build a 16 by 9 aspect ratio wall, you might as well use a projector. If you're going to have LED, do something neat with it and use the tool in a creative way.

 

Molly Geoghegan (19:41)

Yeah, makes sense.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:42)

you have

 

you been to the sphere Cameron in Vegas okay is that how do you know much about how that is projected is a projection or a bit of both okay yeah that's sweet yeah yeah

 

Cameron Magee (19:46)

So unique.

 

It's LED inside and out. the pixels on that thing are so big, it's incredible.

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:00)

It's nuts to like comprehend how they put that

 

together. There will be a Netflix special of like building the sphere. I can like sense it, you know, and people like you are the target audience for that camera. I feel I know the quick sidebar of just like, how do you got into this? Because I know you I know you were involved in your church productions. you ever the kid that's like also like shining lights, creating like a kid play, you know, and you're like flashing flashlight on people and stuff. I was on the other side of that.

 

Mikey Mioduski (20:09)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (20:26)

yeah. yeah. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (20:27)

yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:29)

pretending to be the star, but we really could have used you after some effects.

 

Cameron Magee (20:34)

Kid Cameron was every ⁓ artistic kid's best friend. Because it was like, they want to be the artist. I'm like, great, I will be behind the curtain and be the puppeteer. So Kid Cameron for sure.

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:43)

That's so fun. Yeah, engineer at heart. love it. And for, so getting into, yeah, we've got the screen set up, the non-standard content design. I know you have some thoughts on slideware and how things like the format things are presented and stuff. What's your take on those?

 

Cameron Magee (20:58)

Yeah, I'm someone listening to this audience today, and again, if I'm a corporate event planner or from an agency or something, one of the things I want to just kind of shout from the mountaintops that's almost started to bite people and sneak up on in the last 18 months is underestimating when we do really neat screens, really creative stuff, underestimating that it does make you have a little more discipline on your revision timelines.

 

And so I kind of want to just explain this again, the guy from the crew comes on and is going to geek out for a second and nerd out. If you've got two 16 by nine screens, we can edit those till midnight the night before. Everything's going to be fine. We've edited PowerPoints while someone's presenting. We've had an executive on slide 10 and their assistant or editors backstage on a secondary machine editing slide 20. And then somewhere near slide 14 or 15, we switched the machines. Nobody notices. And we're on a different slide now. Like we can edit 16 by nine stuff.

 

Molly Geoghegan (21:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (21:54)

all they're presenting, that always freaks people out, but we can do it. ⁓ When you start getting into the more creative non-standard shapes, or the non-standard layouts, so like if we do, we did three screens on a show last week, the two side ones were really curvy, and then the middle one was like a super wide, almost like a wide screen in a film, like it was a 2.35 to one, like really kind of sandwiched, and then the sides were curvy, ⁓ that takes a little bit more firepower to,

 

to output that stuff. And so you can almost think of it more like video editing that you can open a Word document and change a word. But if you want to change a word in a video, it has to re-export and re-render. And I think a lot of people aren't thinking about that right now. I think a lot of people are, especially because renders are so ⁓ more accessible now than ever, it's fun to see a render or get sold a render by a designer or an agency or a production company whatever and say, let's do that. But then not.

 

necessarily kind of have the firepower under the hood, both in hardware on site, but also crew and also time. If we, I'll just try to keep this all brief, but it's a of a domino effect there. If you think about when you add the complexity, make sure you've kind of ponied up the time, make sure you've ponied up the, but a crew head count and a little bit of, of equipment budget. ⁓ the what's also sad, if you kind of think about it, it's kind of a shame to do all that creative weird stuff.

 

And then basically it's just like a blue background with the logo in the middle. kind of a hot take there. I see so often we will do all this stuff and they'll say, hey, we've got an in-house design team. We've got an in-house graphic team and they're gonna do this. We're like, okay, that's awesome. Well, you guys know your brand guy, then this is gonna be great. But they don't really know what to do with it. And so then it ends up being very underutilized. So there's a balance here. You wanna do cool stuff. You don't wanna underutilize that by playing it so safe that it's just blue background with logo in the middle.

 

Mikey Mioduski (23:27)

Mmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (23:52)

You want to use it, but then if you're going to really do some robust content, some motion graphics and some neat stuff, just make sure that you've got the hardware backstage, the time to edit it and set expectations with your executives or keynotes or guests or whoever, that those are not changes that we are going to make as people are walking, when doors open, people walking into the room. Those are changes we made four days ago and the crew ran all the cues yesterday and those are kind of locked in.

 

So in an odd way, as much as I'm always advocating for creativity and unusual things, if there's not that budget headroom to really do it in a robust way, it's almost a waste of money to do the creative look in case you're not utilizing it. But I just said a lot there, so I was curious which one.

 

Mikey Mioduski (24:33)

It's like a,

 

yeah, you could have the Lamborghini, but you're, driving it through the school zone anyways. Like, right. ⁓ but so in Cameron, like I've seen some really unique stages once you've worked on, like the design is so cool. I've, and I've, I know we've seen some that are like, I don't know what, if you call this multi-source, but like the question I have is the additional, the additional work and like timing, I guess, and efforts that go into

 

Cameron Magee (24:38)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (24:39)

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (25:04)

trying to run two narrative screens, if you know what I'm saying? Like this screen is gonna have this visual on it while the side screens have this other one. How much versus maybe one is more ambient or environmental, video looping, like you said. Like, is it pretty tough to pull off like dual, like two different sources of the same narrative, if that makes sense?

 

Cameron Magee (25:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

But.

 

This is a great more almost philosophical kind of high level question about almost attention spans and like what's possible. Like I can, I can geek out on the hardware backstage. This isn't a podcast for that. This is more like the soft skills, pay bills, like let's talk like high level stuff here. ⁓ I just love that phrase so much. ⁓ but the, thing about it, a couple of things, I learned this from a client of ours, ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (25:47)

Me too, thank you.

 

Molly Geoghegan (25:47)

Yes, Story

 

camp.

 

Cameron Magee (25:55)

producer at a major company that you've heard of that I have a lot of respect for her and the company. And she taught me a lot and she would give credit to her mentor that was at the company before that taught her but she talks a lot about people's focus and where you want their focus during a presentation. ⁓ And it's almost again I'm talking my hands again so sorry this is annoying for the audio listeners but if you know I'm just spreading my arms as wide as I can almost like at the mouth of a funnel.

 

Molly Geoghegan (26:18)

We'll clip it, we'll clip it.

 

Cameron Magee (26:24)

And it's almost like a good cinematographer, you do an establishing shot. You kind of do this wide thing, here's where we are. But then as you get into the core, like the meat of a scene, a very dramatic scene, a heart to heart moment in a movie, they're all tight shots. And so in a way, you really want to start your presentation big, let's wow, let's have that wow effect. Like, hey, the 2026 4Runner is out now, like let's go left to right, let's have that car drive across the 100 foot screen, let's do all this stuff. But then once our person's up there, let's settle.

 

Let's settle in a little bit. Let's have their attention draw to the center. ⁓ I don't know at that point if it's worth it to have the car kind of doing donuts on the left side while the right side's showing the leather. ⁓ Let's simplify it down and let it breathe a little bit. And so, you know, was kind of preaching there about like utilize the screens, for sure utilize them. You can utilize them at times, you know, and you can have those wow moments, but then really settle in. And that's when it's done really well.

 

Molly Geoghegan (27:04)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (27:21)

It's amazing because you can take the audience on an energy boost, especially when you add the moving lights that like, wow, 30 seconds sizzle, all this stuff happens. But then you don't wanna be doing that while the CTO is then kinda talking. You really wanna focus our eyes and our attention center on that presenter. And we want, and you guys do this so well, you know these principles, but we want to be listening to them and having the visuals support what they're saying, which we've learned from psychology, our brain, can...

 

see things and hear things in different time, but we don't want them reading all of that. And so often when we these big canvases, people start geeking out on all the information we can put up there. And when we have an in-house design team, not doggone in-house, but sometimes the in-house, they only do one big show a year, they only do three big shows a year, whereas we do 100. And so some of those principles, we have to really coach them and help them to say, hey, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

 

Molly Geoghegan (28:13)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (28:14)

That's

 

so good. It's, you know, Molly, we follow Dr. Carmen Simon a lot. talks about the power of salience and like, and rhythm. And I think Cameron, you just really touched on if everything is a home run, you know, every slide you're going for it, big screen, let's use the whole thing. It, it people, it just, uh, it tires the audience, like to the point of like, it loses the impact. And so I love the thinking about this thing holistically, tailoring to the moment, the speech that the ups, the downs, and what can you do?

 

from an event design standpoint to match that or enhance it, I guess.

 

Cameron Magee (28:48)

It's good teamwork. Go ahead, Molly.

 

Molly Geoghegan (28:50)

Oh, I was just gonna quote a little Pixar there to back that up, Mikey, which is what always makes me think of from The Incredibles where the villain goes, I forget the name of the villain, but he's like, if everyone is super, no one will be. Because if everything's big and brash, you're just gonna kinda get glazed over. So it's important to direct and be strategic about where to put people's attention. Very, very great way to say that.

 

Cameron Magee (29:15)

This letter was about to say, it's good teamwork. I'm a musician. I play drums in a 90s country cover band. said that last time on there, that's already out there. And 90s country, it's pretty dumb. It's simple lyrics and stuff talking about trucks and mud and dirt and mama. But the beauty of 90s country, if you think, know, granola opera and stuff, it's called point counterpoint. And it's really well where the fiddle will open a line for two bars, but then the lap steel takes over.

 

Molly Geoghegan (29:21)

Yes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (29:21)

way.

 

Cameron Magee (29:43)

for two bars and they do this really nice, but then as soon as Alan Jackson starts singing, they're not playing at all, they're just standing there. And that teamwork works really well, whereas other types of music, it's all in your face all the time and so you can't have the fiddle, the lap still and the singer all go, it's just, it's too much. And so the best symphonies work together and so the screen is a supporting cast to the presenter. So often, especially if someone's more dry or bland, if it's more of an engineer that's presenting or something, we think, boy.

 

Molly Geoghegan (29:44)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (30:12)

We better put some lipstick on this pig. We better put a lot of stuff on the screen. Let's really go for it out here. Lipstick on the pig, that's an Arkansas reference there for you, But we can overdress it. And ⁓ I just think that's important to just keep that in mind, you know?

 

Mikey Mioduski (30:19)

You

 

Molly Geoghegan (30:28)

Yeah, I just put a marker down for that quote. That was perfect, Cameron. Yeah, so helpful. Not even before the lipstick on the pig, but that put the chair on top. Yeah, I really think there's some principle there, absolutely, for folks to follow. And you don't really tell how much power you have when you get those screens. You're like, people are gonna be looking at you. So think about where it goes, right? And this kind of brings us up to your showmanship and the principles, wisdom. It's kind of like, it's almost philosophical, right? I know you have some kind of like,

 

Mikey Mioduski (30:32)

to.

 

Molly Geoghegan (30:58)

Tenants that you hold dear with that. So tell us a little bit about the principles and the showmanship when people get up in there into the stage

 

Cameron Magee (31:04)

Yeah,

 

I think it's important, you know, there should be some level of Broadway and showmanship to even a corporate meeting. people are emotional. We're human beings, we're emotional, and we should, ⁓ it's not being manipulative or taking advantage of them, it's helping take them on a journey. Like when they come in, it should be a different feeling than in the middle of the presentation, which is different than at the end of the presentation. That's what people remember. That's a good story arc, that's how our minds are wired.

 

I think it's important to have a little bit of showmanship. ⁓ And again, make that, I don't know why I picked Toyota 4-Inner, but just make the 4-Inner drive across the screen and make the lights move and do a little playfulness around that and kind of play into the screen being 100 feet wide or six screens or whatever it is. But then I would settle it in and save it. And ⁓ so often how I like to do that is, again, if we have like a presenter, maybe it's an executive or something.

 

I love to bring the energy ⁓ full width during the walk up song, but then settle it down. And the other thing that I would say is like, if we have a two hour general session, we want to kind of pick like maybe the CEO or the big guest speaker or something. And we want to save something for the screens that we haven't done yet to kind of pull a rabbit out of it. Had a little bit of a trick. ⁓ I took my boys to see a, it's Thanksgiving right now. Like I said, it's about Thanksgiving. So we went and saw the ⁓ Christmas story and Christmas Carol.

 

Molly Geoghegan (32:23)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (32:33)

And the little theater, was not a high budget, it was just a regional theater. They did a great job. I mean, we're an hour into the show and I didn't realize there's pyro in this show and here it comes, you the second ghost, here comes all this pyro. And I was just, it ⁓ was captivating, you it was kind of inspiring to be like, okay, the opening number, sure, the whole cast came out, the whole cast saying we had full sound lights, it was neat.

 

Mikey Mioduski (32:42)

I'm

 

Molly Geoghegan (32:45)

cool.

 

costume.

 

Cameron Magee (32:57)

But they

 

waited until she waved her wand and then it's like, whoa, there's been pyro hidden right there on the stage this whole time. And so I just encourage us as we're thinking about screens and design and how low the ceilings are and all the challenges of these venues and things that we're working in with production design to think about, hey, what are we going to do in the middle of this that kind of surprises people a little bit? The best concerts do this, the best Broadway does this. We can do that same thing for our executives where maybe a lot has been 16 by 9 the whole time.

 

Mikey Mioduski (33:02)

Ahem.

 

Cameron Magee (33:27)

and we've kind of had hidden up our sleep. Maybe it's 16 by 9 with like a background behind it, like an ambient layer, like you said, Mikey. But then all of sudden on one of their slides, if we're talking about home delivery or something, all of a sudden the dog that's in the slide walks out of the 16 by 9. It's like, whoa, he's in the ambient now. Just a trip for a second. You're like, that was cool. You know, five, 10 seconds, but we're back. And that showmanship is just like, that's neat. But you have to save it. You have to have made a pip, made a 16 by 9 pip.

 

Mikey Mioduski (33:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Molly Geoghegan (33:42)

Yes.

 

Cameron Magee (33:56)

to basically create the space for that to happen with a little bit of wonder. ⁓ But I love thinking about things like that. those may be things you didn't think your AV guy was gonna step out from behind the crew and say, but maybe that's for the designers or whatever, but we see so much and we get that inspiration. And so it's cool to put a voice to it.

 

Molly Geoghegan (34:14)

Yeah, and a lot of people don't think they're capable of it, but it could be something really relatively simple, but breaking a pattern, bringing out a guest, even playing a song. Is there someone that comes out with a guitar, whatever, could be anything. But yeah, I'm gonna write that as like, I wrote down, keep a rabbit in your hat, know, save a rabbit for the fun reveal.

 

Cameron Magee (34:22)

Yes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (34:31)

Yeah, the Easter eggs,

 

Cameron Magee (34:32)

That's right.

 

Mikey Mioduski (34:34)

the, and then, and then I imagine it was like, dang, they saved pyro until halfway through the show. I'd probably be thinking like, what else do they got? You know? And so like, I'm not going to check out now. Yeah, we're only halfway through. They might have something else that's really cool. Totally.

 

Molly Geoghegan (34:43)

Exactly.

 

Even if you know the story, right? That's like a

 

Cameron Magee (34:50)

That's

 

right.

 

Molly Geoghegan (34:50)

famous, familiar story, but to kind of bring in something cool and new. so, yeah. Mikey, we might have to go down a, like, we need to talk to a theater stage manager.

 

Mikey Mioduski (35:00)

Maybe, I will say, I always fall

 

asleep during the second half of Wicked, because the first, mean, Defying Gravity should basically be the end, because it gets, for me, really boring after that. Yeah. You heard it here. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (35:04)

Sure.

 

Yes, yeah. Right, Hot, hot take about the second one's about to come out. We might get some stands

 

Cameron Magee (35:18)

you

 

Molly Geoghegan (35:19)

coming after

 

us. That's so cool, Cameron. Yeah, I really, I think it's such a cool blend of the technology, the storytelling part of that showmanship, and then just like the execution of helping people up there in real time. Give us a little bit of like...

 

If things are going wrong, what things typically go wrong and what are some course correcting to just maybe calm some people's nerves if they're listening that they're like, I hate events, they stress me out, there's all this stuff that could go wrong. You understand that it can happen. It can and will happen, right? But the show must go on. What are some kind of course corrections you have to do on the regular?

 

Cameron Magee (35:54)

Yeah, I'm super blessed. I bet we've only had maybe just a hand, like less than you can count on your fingers of like problems in a real show that was like, oh no.