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The second year of the 'Pacific Symphony Plazacast' at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts plaza in Costa Mesa was a resounding success this year, as itgrew to over 3,000 attendees. The live simulcast of the Symphony's performance of Stravinsky's landmark piece, "The Rite of Spring", with the Pacific Chorale and four guest artists, marked the end of this season's classics series to critical acclaim and audience excitement. Pacific Symphony's Music Director, Carl St. Clair, undertook the production of the piece, requiring an enormous orchestra, and integrated it with a companion offering from Tchaikovsky in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall while thousands watched, and listened to, the free, outdoor simulcast. When first performed, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation and a near-riot in the audience. The crowd in Irvine, embraced the performance enthusiastically, though without any rioting.

This year, to cover the event, we had a 7 camera system, and included titles to help the audience follow the choral preformances. Pacific Symphony's Jeff Sells directed the production again this year. David Elliott was again there in the role of Senior Video, shading cameras and managing the technical facilities. This year's event added a level of complexity as it was interleaved with youth performances during the day, giving the technical team the task of producing two complex performances, back-to back.

The event was followed by "the Fright of Spring" produced starring selected members of the cast, in a combined tribute to Stravinsky's work, and to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"

In the high stakes world of Aviation, the helicopter business is dominated by four Major Players,,, and among them Agusta Westland is the least known name in the US, but the brand globally accepted as being the greatest innovator, and builder of some of the most popular small and mid-sized helicopters in Europe, and increasingly in the US. We see their helicopters everywhere; in the movie Skyfall, at this year's olympics, and their AW101 helicopter is the world's leader in VVIP transport, carrying Kings, Presidents and event the Pope. This year, Agusta launched five new models, and showcased their new offerings at a mammoth trade show booth at Heli-Expo 2013 in Las Vegas. The event featured a 660 Panel LED wall on two sides of their 70' x 70' booth building, and was the largest, brightest wall at the show.

SPI's David Elliott was called in to direct the live event, and to direct the video content and recording that was done on site. Daily highlights reels were produced to run on the wall each day of the show, along with widescreen content about Agusta's products and company. A huge success the multi-day event drew in thousands of attendees, and was a very success full showcase for the new products, and for the multi-unit sales that were confirmed and announced at the event. Planning is already well underway for next year's effort, pledged to be even bigger.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Annual gala this year moved back to the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a ceremony honoring producer and long-time center supporter, Jerry Bruckheimer. Medals of Valor also went to surviving members of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Astronaut Mark Kelly, and Holocaust survivor, Elisabeth Mann. The event was attended by approximately 850 supporters of the organization, many from the entertainment industry. We provided all of the technical facilities for the event as well as show management. The center's Academy Award Winning film unit, Moriah Films produced videos for each of the honorees which were played in the room in stunning HD video. This event marked the first time that we produced the entire event in HD, with a four camera HD production system. To bring life to the room, we used a rental scenic solution that gave the client a fantastic-looking backdrop for their event at a very reasonable cost. The event was a great success, and we look forward to working with the client again next year, and on other future events.

The cycle on trade show events in the Pharmaceutical industry runs from September through June every year, and SPI just completed its first year of providing planning and logistical support for Marken, LLP, a logistics provider in the Pharma industry. Marken specializes in deliveries of medications and tissue samples for the clinical trials phase of drug testing. Clinical trials are the most crucial phase in the drug development process wherein new drugs are, for the first time, tested in human patients.

The new development in the Pharma industry is "Biologics." A biologic medical product is a medicinal product such as a vaccine, blood or blood component, allergenic, somatic cell, gene therapy, tissue, recombinant therapeutic protein, or living cells that are used as therapeutics to treat diseases.  Biologics are created by biologic processes, rather than being chemically synthesized and are often are at the forefront of biomedical research, and may be used to treat a variety of medical conditions for which no other treatments are available. While wildly successful clinically, Biologics are extremely sensitive to variations in temperature, have a short window of effectiveness, are enormously expensive to produce and may even be specifically target at a single test patient.

Marken specializes in on-time, every time, deliveries of these and other clinical materials, while preserving the "Cold Chain" thru the delivery process and navigating customs and transport restrictions for their life-dependent shipments. This last year, Marken participated in 68 trade events to tell their story and engage with their clients, and they trusted SPI to help them do it. Our responsibilities included managing the shipment of the exhibit booths, print materials (and even mints as a giveaway in the booths). We handled exhibitor and presenter registrations, hotel bookings and we planned and managed client dinners and successful hospitality events to help raise client awareness of Marken. The events were global in scope, and there were often several concurrent or at least, back-to back events. It was a great year, and we look to the next round of events which begins in September.

Approximately 2,000 people showed up for the first 'Pacific Symphony Plazacast' on Saturday night at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts plaza in Costa Mesa. The live simulcast of the Symphony's performance of Beethoven's Ninth, with the Pacific Chorale and four guest artists, started at 9:00 pm. After the performance, Pacific Symphony's Music Director, Carl St. Clair, stepped out onto a balcony of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall and greeted everyone who watched the outdoor simulcast. What he heard back was a surprising chorus of 'Happy Birthday' in celebration of the Maestro's 60th Birthday.

It was a great event, we had a 6 camera system, and Pacific Symphony's Video Director, Jeff Sells did a fantastic job. David Elliott was there in the role of Senior Video, and had a great time shading cameras and managing the technical facilities. It is always the greatest of pleasures to work with the incredibly talented people at the Pacific Symphony.