How to have proper sound and stage

Sound, lighting and stage designers are the important people and are by far the most underrated when it comes to event planning. No one thinks they deserve a fat cheque, but they are the people that make the event what it is, honestly.
As an event organiser, let’s be frank, you would not mind paying an artist R100 000 but want to negotiate the stage designer’s fee, right?

Think about it...
Do you think people would enjoy the event if they could not see the artist or hear them properly? Absolutely not.

Kagiso Moima, founder of Black Motion Production shared with us what makes them important..

STAGE
Firstly, designing the stage where your speakers and artists will be standing takes time- two days or more. “When we design the stage, we first thing about how the artist can be seen by everyone. We think of how many attendees are going to be there, how far and how high do we need to raise the stage,” he explained.

He added that people like to see the full length of the human being, so if an artist is on stage, then the stage designers need to make sure that everyone sees them. Attendees want to see the real-life person; this is where the audio-visuals come in. The LED lights are there for the attendees’ great experience. There are cameras that capture the person on stage so that they can be seen by a person at a distance.

LIGHTING
A lot of creative elements go into the lighting of the stage at night. It must be atmospheric and fun. People need to go to a concert and be inspired by something.

SOUND
Sound is also important because everyone must hear the person speaking on stage. You must be creative with how and where you hang it and balance it well to make sure that someone who’s at a 100m distance still enjoys themselves. And if someone stands on a 2m distance from you there must not be anything messing up with their eardrums.

Ultimately when you look at the whole setup, it must look appealing and live long in your memory. Create something that will make people think about how and why that was done. You need people to have something that illuminates in your attendees’ minds after the event. They need to ask themselves how the drum was lit, how did those screens behind it operate or how did the messages come up to the screens.

Respect the sound, lighting and stage people and invest in them because there won’t be a proper concert, event or festival without their hard work.