At the beginning of the summer, long-established entertainment and event technology supplier Good Guy Productions invested in a significant number of ADJ’s AV4IP LED video panels.
Part of a long-term plan, and the next step in the company’s growth strategy, the system has already been put to use delivering live video playback of socially-distanced graduation ceremonies.
Based in the Lake Placid area of New York state, Good Guys Productions provides audio and lighting rental, as well as DJ and other entertainment services, for a wide range of private and corporate clients. The company is owned and managed by Eric Wilson, who has spent his entire life working as part of the entertainment industry in some form.
The name ‘Good Guy Productions’ comes from Eric’s time on the radio. The anchors who would go out into the community to do remote broadcasts for the station he worked for were known as the ‘good guys’. When the station sadly closed, he decided he liked the name and asked the owner if he could keep using it for his DJ and production company. A quarter of a century later, it is still Eric’s company name and one that he feels captures the ethos of the business.
Over the past 25 years Good Guy Productions has grown to offer a wide range of services. While still providing lighting and DJ services for smaller private events and school dances, Eric and his team are regularly involved in large scale events in their local area, including concerts and high profile sporting events. That was why the next logical step in the company’s growth was to expand into the world of LED video and, having built up an extensive inventory of ADJ lighting equipment, they had trust in the brand which made it the logical choice for this latest significant investment.
“Where we’re located in Lake Placid,” explains Eric, “we’ve had the Olympics here twice, so that history is very important in this town. We hold a lot of world cup events, Iron Man competitions and New York’s ‘Empire State Games’, and video walls are brought in for these from 7+ hours away. So it made sense for us to invest in our own system."
"In fact I made the decision back in 2018, during the Olympics. A local kid was in the final of the luge, going for a medal, so the town hosted a watch party. They brought in a truck-mounted LED screen and the pixel pitch was so low that we couldn’t see the time on the screen, so we didn’t know if our guy was going to medal. At that moment the organizer looked over at me and said, ‘isn’t it time for you to buy a wall?’ and I’ve been planning the purchase ever since!”
Having researched all the available options, Eric decided to invest in 45 of ADJ’s AV4IP LED video panels, allowing Good Guy Productions to offer its customers a video wall of up to 15’ x 6.5’. With a 4.81mm pixel pitch and 4000NITs of brightness as well as an IP65-rated front surface and IP54-rated rear, these flexible video panels can be used both indoors and outdoors for a wide variety of applications. Alongside the panels, Eric also bought a Novastar VX4S video processor, which is capable of running 2.6 million pixels – more than enough, even with the additional 15 AV4IP panels that Good Guy Productions plans to purchase in the future.
“We choose the ADJ AV4IP because it is multi-purpose,” states Eric. “The 4mm pitch is tight enough for indoor events, but the IP-rating and huge brightness means that we can also use it outdoors at any time of the day and in any weather. Which is important, because it can get pretty cold out here when we do our winter events, so it was essential that we went for a product that will be ok even in those super low temperatures (which is the case for the AV4IP). I’d seen the panels on display at trade shows, so had a good idea of what I was buying, but having had the chance to use them properly I can say that I’ve been very impressed, they are crystal clear and super bright.”
In addition to the AV4IP setup, Eric also invested in a Global Truss America ground support system for the screen. This incorporates the innovative new DT36 square truss, which features an extra central 2” bar along its length. This allows clamps to be attached to the center of the truss, unimpeded by the cross-brace supports, and is therefore ideal for directly flying a video wall.
“This may not seem to be the best time to make such a big investment,” admits Eric, “what with the state of the economy and COVID-19 preventing events from taking place, but I actually think now is the perfect time. Normally we’re too busy working on events to spend time working on the business, finding ways of doing things better and working out new services to offer to our customers. We’ve got downtime at the moment, which I see as an opportunity to invest in the company so that when we’re able to come back we’ll be in a position to really knock it out of the park!”
Despite the fact that Eric’s expansion into LED video hire is part of a long-term plan, with sporting events and concerts set to be its primary application post-coronavirus, he found another niche for the service as soon as the system was delivered. He offered the service to local high schools at the time they were working out how to organize socially-distanced graduation ceremonies and found the response to be overwhelming.
So much so that schools were willing to schedule their events around the availability of Good Guy Productions’ new screen! For some of these events the team provided a big screen to show an enlarged view of what was happening on stage to a safely spread-out audience, while others operated a ‘drive-in’ viewing area for parents in a parking lot, with the screen displaying the ceremony to an audience who couldn’t see the stage at all!
