In early May of last year, Show Imaging entirely transformed itself from a live events company to a virtual events company with a widespread, global audience. This means that on a regular basis, they are bringing technicians, clients, producers and talent from disparate geographical locations, onto one virtual stage.
According to Show Imaging’s Director of Technology, Beau Monaghan, “Clear-Com has made this possible.”Show Imaging anticipated the shift to all-virtual events in late March when the initial COVID-19 restrictions were announced. They began construction on a production studio right away and had a completed facility after only seven days. After two months of using the space to pitch clients, they booked their first virtual production and have been completely booked ever since.
“In live show production, intercom was almost an afterthought. Not to say that it wasn’t absolutely crucial to the show, but we would bring our selection of analog and digital intercom and set it up at a singular location,” Monaghan explained. “With virtual events, intercom is at the epicenter, because it’s the only way we can bring everyone together to simulate a singular location.”Show Imaging was able to leverage their existing Clear-Com inventory to transition into this new virtual space. Their Eclipse® HX Digital Matrix could tie remote locations together with their LQ® IP Interfaces and enable a remote producer in a remote studio on FreeSpeak II® Digital Wireless Intercom to speak to a zoom producer in a different remote studio, in a different state, on HelixNet® Digital Network Partyline.
“We had a warehouse full of gear for live production, and the ability to use what we had to transform our business was absolutely critical,” Monaghan said. “We added a few more LQs and after testing Eclipse HX and realizing how well it complemented what we already had, we decided to purchase that too.”One of their recent projects with an Atlanta-based pharmaceutical company demonstrated the power of an integrated intercom solution and made use of Show Imaging’s host of Clear-Com equipment. They tied their main studio in Vista, CA to the client’s headquarters in Georgia with additional remote locations in Texas, New Jersey and Kansas, all in real-time. By using a combination of Agent-IC and LQ devices connected to local HelixNet and FreeSpeak ll systems, trunked back to an Eclipse frame in their main studio in Vista, all the interested parties were able to communicate with each other seamlessly and effectively.
In some cases, clients with no intercom experience are required to provide direction during a live virtual event. In these scenarios, Clear-Com’s Agent-IC Mobile intercom App is an easily teachable, cost-effective and fast-to-deploy solution that complements existing intercom systems.“By providing an easy and clear way to communicate all around the globe, we have been very successful in delivering multi-city events with thousands of attendees,” Monaghan said.
In addition to their primary studio space, they have also constructed 10 smaller studios, four of which use Clear-Com Encore® Analog Partyline, and six of which use HelixNet. These studios do not feature cameras but are full-featured virtual control rooms that can pull together a variety of shows from live and prerecorded material. Once live events are able to resume, Show Imaging plans to keep all studios operating as part of their overall service offering.
Show Imaging has a Creative Studio dedicated to curating and elevating the look and feel of any event, as well as a Software Development division that specializes in creating custom software and web experiences for live and virtual events.