Alford Media Relies on the Barco Folsom Encore to Launch Frito-Lay's Conference
Recently, Alford Media drove a 15’ x 48’ wide screen with the Barco Folsom Encore Presentation System for the Annual Frito-Lay Starfleet meetings. Although this is not the first show Alford has supported for Frito-Lay, it is the first Frito-Lay event where they utilized the Encore. Alford also relied on Barco SLM R6 projectors for the delay screens.
To stage this year’s event, Dave Arthur, founder of Arthur & Company relied primarily on a giant video screen that was framed to look like the front window of the spaceship, giving audience members the feeling of being inside the ship looking out. To each side of the screen were smaller 7x10-foot screens used for IMAG imagery and four Barco SLM R6 projectors were used for the two IMAG screens.
According to Bill Brady, senior video engineer for Alford Media, the credit for that image improvement goes to the Encore. Interestingly, he says, “it was the Frito-Lay executives themselves who made the decision to use the Encore for this year’s event. Once they saw the Encore images, it was what they wanted. They just wanted what was on the screen.”
Brady also admits that the Encore’s list of video effects is impressive that includes drop shadows, borders, and the ability to support multiple, free-moving PIP windows. The Frito-Lay event used as many as four moving PIPs on screen at one time.
But the most dramatic moment of the show came when Alford Media used the Encore’s keying capability to do a live, full-body key onto the center screen. Once the full-body was on screen, he could interact with the other characters on the stage and his image could be moved around anywhere on the screen.
“It was kind of tricky to make it work, but in the end, it did. And it was exactly what the client wanted,” says Brady. “To be honest, the quality of the results even surprised us. It was the first time I’d ever seen anything keyed onto a wide-screen. And it really looked clean.”
As for Dave Arthur, he’s no doubt hard at work thinking of new ways to put Encore’s keying capabilities to work in other shows. “Whenever I learn about new capabilities, it’s exciting. Sometimes it means I can finally stage things that’d I’d been thinking about but haven’t been able to do before. And other times it simply gives me the freedom to come up with some completely new ideas that never occurred to me before.”
About Barco
Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company (Euronext: BAR; Reuters: BARBt.BR; Bloomberg: BAR BB).
About Alford Media
Alford Media Services is a nationally recognized staging company providing video, audio, lighting and show coordination services for a wide range of clientele. We bring together a group of dedicated professionals with years of experience in the audio-video industry to provide solutions to customers worldwide. Our goal is to be the best (not necessarily the biggest) corporate event staging company in the country. To achieve that goal we believe we must provide the best in personnel, equipment and value. We have a burning desire to excel— in the ballroom, at the office, and in life. We believe true success can not be achieved without the sincere outpouring of goodwill towards our employees, our clients, and our community. From a one-day company meeting to a touring extravaganza, we work to exceed your expectations every time. www.alfordmedia.com
