Corporate events are their own blend of fun…and I’ve done a lot of them. Let me show you some ways to set up your console for an impressive show that is also flexible enough to deal with on-the-fly changes.

If you work in lighting and you are lighting any show that doesn’t include a band on a stage, you may find that you have elements of a corporate event in your show. A lot of events like these can be really similar in the way they are set up and can be great to be familiarized with to be able to make some money from these types of gigs.

Consoles for Corporate Events

Most of the time the console used for lighting a corporate event will include ten faders or less; it may even be just a screen and a page of buttons.

Getting Started

There are a couple things that you will lay out at the start of every event. The first thing you will want to program on your first fader of your console is your main stage wash. Next your podium or lectern fader will come in handy.

Depending on the console you may end up setting them up in slightly different ways, but the important thing is to make sure that they are there for your access. You want to make these two faders high enough of a priority that nothing overrides them as long as they are up.

Button Use

Next, you will want to make use of your buttons. Storing your cue properly and efficiently will help you run things smoothly as you go along in your show. No matter what you want to label it, it is important to set up your main cue.

This main cue will host your home position for all of your moving lights, as well as a home color for all of your colors, etc. It is a little bit of a different way of programming that you will find incredibly useful.

You can store all of these into this cue and make it active for as soon as the console boots up. This gives you a base to work with right away upon turning things on and you can then make adjustments as needed.

The Rest of the Faders

Once you have your base set up ready to go, you can then start adding to the remaining faders. You will want to include color combinations that you will be using on set to your playback buttons. Different gobos are also great to add to the playback buttons for quick access.

With the rest of your faders, you will then primarily program effects and other special effects. This may include blinders, blinder chase, a pan tilt movement for the stage and the house, and perhaps some different color or intensity effects that you will use more often than others.

You may find that you want to leave some space in the middle faders for anything special that comes up. This may include skits that require special lighting or other portions of the event where there is some sort of special cue that you will need to bring up on demand.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, corporate events are actually quite simple in set up in comparison to other types of shows you may find yourself working with. Often times a corporate event is the one big event that they host each year for their company or organization so preparing yourself properly will help you to make the event run as smoothly as possible and ensure that you are ready for anything and that everything turns out perfectly every time.