Terry Fator

I'm Laughlin Nevada calls again. I was asked to be the director for the Terry Fator show. For those of you who don't know who he is, he was a winner from a season of Americas Got Talent. He does ventriloquism and has a few different puppets that he uses.  He has a show in Vegas, but did a show in Laughlin and I was able to help out with it. I actually ran a camera for his show last year, so I have seen his act and kind of knew what to expect.

I worked with Gary and James for this show. We went down on Saturday and shot it Saturday night. Talked to Terry for a little bit and he seems like a nice guy. The show went well and I worked along side his manager to make the show run smooth. 

One thing I found interesting was that he has one puppet, Elvis, that he doesn't have any prepared lines for. The manager said he is able to let go and use his imagination with that puppet. So that was different compared to the other ones where he had written down lines of what to say. 

I was semi disappointed that the act was exactly the same as last year. I was hoping it would be a whole new show but it unfortunately was not. I hope I'm able to do it again next year and hopefully he has new added elements to make it a great show. 

Grammys 2016

I wasn't able to go to the show, (last minute decision) but I give props to my company and want to give a shout out for everyone being amazing and putting together the screen for the Grammys performance by Justin Bieber and Jack U. So sad I missed it but so neat I work for a company who gets these awesome opportunities! 

Northrop Grumman

I finally get to come to California! Even though the traffic is crazy, everything is expensive, and the people are high maintenance, I love it here. For this show we are doing a 3ml video wall about the size of a semi truck. 10'x40'. I know most of you don't know what a 3ml wall is, but they are AWESOME! Most of our shows that we do are ran on 6 ml or 8 ml walls, but 3 ml walls are beautiful! You can barely tell its a video wall.

We drove down to Redondo Beach on Sunday night to set up. Set up included Frank, Luis, Samantha, Victor and I. We got here around 8 at night and worked until about 4 in the morning. We were all in that lovely goofy and weird mood by that time. Set up went well, just very time consuming and tedious.  Everyone left except for Victor and I who had to be back at 7am.  So Basically we went to the hotel, showered and slept for an hour, just to get up and be back here for a 7am-7pm day.  Needless to say, I was a zombie on Monday night. I went to the hotel and crashed.  

Our client that we work directly with for Northrop Grumman is Bruce. It was my first time meeting him and he has grown to love me already. He gives me hugs every time he see's me and knows that he can count on me to take care of any problem. I think that a gratifying perk of my job. When I can comfort people into knowing we will do a good job for them, they are completely thankful.  

I signed a contract not to disclose any information from this show so I can't say much about it.  But I'm so glad I had the opportunity to work for them and I hope we do a lot of business for them in the future. And seeing our screen set up for the show was perfect! I think they were beyond happy with the set up and it definitely adds to the show having a massive screen that is beautiful quality! 

We actually had a back to back show with them.  So we tore down the stuff and basically brought it to the next location in Palmdale, CA to do it all over again.  I heard awesome news for a show that we are working in the next week or so though. I'm gonna leave it unnamed for now, but you will DEFINITELY hear about it! 

The O'Jays

The who? I've never heard of them, or recognized any of their songs. The O'Jays apparently used to be good back in the day. But I'm too young to understand I suppose. We were able to film them in one of our contracted venues in Laughlin, NV. I worked with Gary, Ethan and two other new people we training. For this show I was asked to control the Remote cameras. So basically that entails me sitting back stage, playing with a joystick thing-a-ma-bob that controlled two of our remote cameras. This venue is only worked by us, so it's an easy setup. There's not much to really say about this show. It was quick, I had no idea what the songs were, and I didn't really like them to be honest. But I never turn down experience and I'm glad my work gives me the opportunity. Hopefully the next show will be a bit more exciting!

Glock Guns

After my eventful show of breaking my finger, leaving me with a permanent 'giving the bird' it felt nice to be back in Las Vegas, which has began to feel like home for me since my boyfriend lives there. We had our next show luckily in Las Vegas. Yay! This actually turned into a 19 hour day, which was awful. But it turned out to be a pretty neat event.

Glock Guns hosted a dinner party for several high end clients. People were dressed to the T here. It was held in the Palazzo ballroom at The Venetian Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. a beautiful big room with chandeliers and high ceilings. There were a lot of tables set up and a few bars. There was a main stage for some music acts who we were hired to film. The first act was called Bella Strings. Four girls who played electric violins/bass instruments. Wow! I thought I was going to be bored, but they definitely put on a great opening act show. They played different remakes of songs from pop to old school rock.

The second act that performed was Party on the Moon.  These guys were phenomenal. They rocked the whole room and got everybody pumped! So glad I was able to see them. They also had special guest Andy Grammer for the "Honey I'm Good" song they did a remake to. They put on a great performance and I was loving being able to direct the show for them!

During the show Glock would take breaks to do giveaway prizes for some of the customers. They gave away Apple watches, Drones, a trip, a special engraved pistol, and even two Harley Davidson motorcycles! Apparently they know how to thank and take care of their customers!

Nothing too extreme happened during this show, oh except for these awesome pics. Haha their going to hate me!

 

Anyways the client was happy and the show was a success, unfortunately I didn't get to go home with a new gun, but there's always next time!

Monster Jam Louisville

Kentucky, the bluegrass state. Wrong. The grass is white, covered in snow! Louisville Kentucky is a very familiar place to me. As many of you know I use to live there when I was a young little nugget. Things have changed as I have gotten older but the southern feeling of the community definitely brings back some sweet sweet memories. Why am I here? Two words.

                                                                    MONSTER JAM! 

I was asked to direct a two day show in the Freedom Hall Arena in Louisville Kentucky on Jan 15th and 16th. I flew out there on the Tuesday before to set up. I had Luis (a fellow coworker) there to help me with the set up. 

It was freezing here! We had plenty of layers on as we worked through the days. Long days might I add! There were lots of changes for this show that made an easy 8 hour day turn into a 16. I have worked with FELD before (The company who owns Monster Jam/Supercross/Disney on Ice, etc.) so there were a few people I knew already but quite a few who I did not. So as most people would agree, not everybody can get along. 

Which leads me to my lovely story of Matt. Matt was hired for this particular show only. He was in charge of the Audio portion of the show (Speakers/Mics/Music). He is one of those guys with a bad attitude of he's the only guy there that matters, even though we all have to come together to make a show happen united. Anyways, I caught him trying to sneakily steal a roll of our Gaff Tape. Sounds lame, I know. But Gaff Tape is used to tape down cables so people don't trip and can actually be quite expensive. So I called him out. He threw it back at me with a bad attitude, knowing I just caught him, and it hit my finger wrong. SNAP. Broke it. Needless to say, I did not like Matt for the rest of the show or probably forever for that matter. 

The best the paramedics on site could do was this lovely stick and some tape. An interesting conversation starter to say the least. And boy was it difficult to work with this injury. Directing consist of using your fingers to press buttons. This made my life a whole lot harder, but I managed and pulled off two fantastic shows! 

It was a long trip, a lot of hours of work, no sleep, broken bones, sore body but it paid off in the end. 

On a side note, I was able to go visit Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby is held as well as my old time favorite restaurant back east O'Charleys. Met a few good people on my 3 hour layover in North Carolina, and gained a lot of respect from some awesome people working for FELD. Overall the trip was a great success! Minus the broken finger. 

The Golden Boys

One beauty of my job is most undoubtedly the traveling aspect that comes with it. This past weekend I was asked to go to Laughlin, NV. One of my most worked/favorite weekend getaway places. A small little casino town located about an hour and a half South-East of Las Vegas. Definitely a old folk atmosphere, but none the less a great little town that also makes me feel like a hot and young rockstar. ;) The show that we filmed this weekend was called The Golden Boys. A 50's themed show with a few 50's era idols. I worked the show with three other coworkers (Gary, Ethan and Alyssa). I was asked to direct this show which I love doing so I was excited to work with this client. So when we arrived we began to set up the cameras and switching equipment. Because this is a smaller venue, we only used 2 cameras (operated by Gary and Ethan). Alyssa was sitting beside me line directing for me as well as rolling the videos that were provided by The Golden Boys manager.

I'm gonna try to make it a goal to come up with one funny/odd thing that happens at every show. So before the show was starting and the venue began to fill up with people I had to run to the bathroom. As I walked out the venue door towards the bathroom I passed an elderly gentleman (the Laughlin norm), looked at me and told me as well as the security guard that he was going to kidnap me when I left. Security guard did nothing. I looked at him and just said "oh wow". He looked back and me and told me he was offended I wasn't interested. EXCUSE ME?! I should be the one offended and scared for my life when I leave this place tonight! I brushed it off and went back to backstage where we wait before the show starts. 

Being born in the 90's, it's pretty obvious I'm not that up to date on the 50's music. Regardless I'm here to do a job and that's what I'm gonna do. The show began and The two acts went up on stage. The show was great and there were several songs I actually recognized. The infamous song 'Beauty School Dropout' off of the movie Grease was one of them. Frankie Avalon was one of the acts. And the age of 75 he is one great performer. At the end of the show he came off stage and took some pictures with several fans. After the fans died down he came and talked to Alyssa and I. He said he was shocked that we were running the show and noted how rare it is to find females in this field. We also got a picture with him. Definitely a confidence booster as well as a fantastic way to end the night. One of our smaller shows, but a great show packaged with a lot of compliments. I'm now writing this on the plane as I am flying to the next show. I'll give a hint of where it is. Louisville, KY. Any guesses of what show it is? Guess you'll just have to wait til the next one!