As more companies and brands look to leave an impression on consumers by incorporating innovative technology into their live events, event production companies are getting even more creative in their ideas, execution, and strategy—in house. Rather than relying on third-party vendors, production companies are experimenting with and creating live event technologies at their own studios. Here’s a look inside the research and development processes of three such companies—Production Glue, LDJ Productions, and Wondermakr—and a peek inside their studios.
Allowing employees to tinker.
Production Glue—which has offices in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon—built a research and development incubator called GlueLab. The 800-square-foot lab in the company’s New York office basement focuses on the integration of applied technology for event production. The lab, which was launched in 2014, is staffed by the company’s producers and technical directors. A two-person team leads activities and programming in the space, which offers a variety of tools necessary to ideate and prototype event technology. The space also allows employees to tinker in areas of development such as experimental design, equipment design, and free-flowing ideation.
Recent projects to come from the lab include National Geographic’s “Experience Mars” activation in New York in 2016, which invited guests to operate a space suit glove in a zero-gravity environment, as well as a gamified experience aboard a yacht for AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead at the 2016 Comic-Con International in San Diego, which featured five zombie-theme activities. For the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, the company produced a coffee machine-powered video activation for sponsor Nespresso, in which attendees could watch a series of profile videos about the origin of the brand’s coffee varieties by selecting a specific Nespresso pod.
Kurland says that the company’s process from idea to execution is always collaborative. “When we’re working together, we bridge the production and the creative world. For us, the creative side has developed in our timeline over the years, second to the execution,” she explains. “Because our core is so much about production and execution, needing to design and creatively develop clients’ ideas has required us to have that skill set. The creative development has come out of how to translate a client’s creative idea to the live experience.”