3 Reasons to Invest In Your Event

There are many audiovisual companies out there offering to give you the most bang for your buck. Some will even assure you that you are getting the lowest price - but you always get what you pay for. At The AV Company, we know what we're worth. We don't promise to be the cheapest option out there - we promise to be worth the investment.

It's important to invest in audiovisual services for your events, for the sake of your team and your attendees. Here, we've identified a few reasons why investing in AV is a smart decision - and while we're not averse to tooting our own horn once in a while, this time we'll let some of our favorite clients do the talking.

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“TAVCO helps me create an experience for attendees. This experience creates an environment of engagement and excitement. People want an invite to our program because each year we raise the bar and folks look forward to see how we elevate the experience. TAVCO is a key partner in our execution of such success. ”

— A.B., Sr. Director of Corporate Planning & Support, S&P Global

“The AV Company has worked closely with the Sentara Leadership Institute for the past three years, helping us with major leadership conferences. While I may have the fancy title of “producer”, I usually can sit back and enjoy the show because they have the script so well-rehearsed and put together, I rarely need to do very much other than check in with them. Any challenges that have arisen were immediately met with the team coming together to discuss and always finding a solution.

Our speakers are made to feel comfortable, and their AV and technical needs are met with a smile, and a “what else can I do for you?” With the continual demanding technical advances, I just to turn to JF and his team knowing that our AV technical needs for our conference will be well taken care of while I sit in my “producer’s chair” and enjoy the show.”

— W.M., SPHR/SHRM-SCP, Sentara Healthcare

“We enjoyed working with TAVCO on our annual Hoos Choice Awards for the Athletics Department. The visual renderings created were very helpful in creating a vision. They turned around draft changes quickly and responded with quote changes in a very timely manner... When we came up with an issue in building new stairs, we worked together to understand what permitting, etc. was required and they educated us on what needed to happen.”

— M.P., Administrative Assistant, UVA Athletics Sports Promotions

From Then to Now: Virginia Film Festival

There are some events, conferences, & festivals in our portfolio that we are lucky enough to get to work on as they develop from year to year, like TEDxCharlottesville which we talked about back in January. Another one of our annual favorites is the Virginia Film Festival's Opening Night Gala! This event is held every year at the Jefferson Theater, and it provides a unique challenge to create a new look in the same space - one with lots of existing ornament - every year.

 

2012

In its first year being held at the Jefferson, we used our frazzle lanterns and a projection screen to add some visual interest to the stage area. We projected black & white photos of film stars onto the faux balconies on either side of the main space for an old Hollywood feel, and used colorful lighting to increase the ambience.

2014

By 2014, we were venturing into the exciting world of projection mapping! This year's event was based largely around the premiere of the locally-filmed movie Big Stone Gap, so the aesthetic direction was to use fall imagery to evoke the feeling of the Blue Ridge mountains. We created video content to fit this vision, mapped it onto the walls of the space, and topped it off with an extra-large projection screen onstage to display Film Festival branding material.

 

2015

The following year, we created some new projection content to better incorporate the festival's new spectrum of branding colors. We also added some hanging Edison bulbs onstage to bring a more rustic feeling to the space.

 

2016

In 2016, we switched out the onstage projection screen for a unique LED video wall configuration. We also added rain curtain to the stage set to warm it up a bit & add some sparkle, and created more ambient, high-energy projection content for the proscenium and walls.

 

2017

This year, we worked more of the branding colors into the lighting and revamped the LED wall layout to be more conducive to the Film Festival's existing content. Because fireflies were a major component in this year's poster design, we used a disco ball to splash firefly-like lighting around the space in lieu of projection mapping. We also added string lights to the staging to enhance the ethereal feel.

We're honored to have been involved in this event for so many years, and our long-standing relationship & close connection to the festival allow us to create innovative decor designs while maintaining a thread of stylistic continuity from year to year.

Keynote, PowerPoint, or Prezi?

There are lots of presentation applications out there these days, many of them rapidly improving in functionality. Working on conferences, we get to see lots of different presentation methods, so we thought we'd take you through the three major ones and break down the pros & cons of each to help you decide which is best for your next presentation.

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This application has been around for a while, and it's usually the first program that people learn to create visual presentations with. It's relatively easy to use, it's familiar to most people, and it's available on both Mac & Windows platforms.

Unfortunately, slide content does not always translate well between Windows & Mac computers, which could cause problems if you built your presentation on one computer and have to present it on another. Overall, though, it is a solid tool for creating slideshows and presenting visual information.

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Keynote is a favorite of many Mac users & Apple aficionados. It has a more minimal & user-friendly interface, and often provides more seamless video & audio playback than PowerPoint.

That said, it is only compatible with Mac platforms - and its presenter mode, which many speakers depend on, can be tricky to customize and lay out effectively. But Keynote gets bonus points for its default slide aspect ratio (which just so happens to be the aspect ratio that looks best on screen!)

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Prezi is a much newer option, but we're seeing more and more speakers depend on it for presentations of all scales. It's a free application that offers multiple levels of unique & useful paid features.

Its main distinguishing quality is the ability to create more engaging presentations using highly dynamic transitions between slides. It also gives you some flexibility in where you edit & play the presentations from, as it is available both as a browser-based and as a desktop application. Because of the dynamic slide transitions, there can be some slight lagging when clicking through slides - so if you like to move backwards & forwards through your presentation quickly, this may not be your best option. All things considered, this application is worth at least toying with to see if the kinetic layouts might give your content some oomph!

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If you have any questions about creating presentation content for your next event, feel free to reach out to us by clicking the button below!