Origin Story
Description
How it Could Have Been Better
Specs
The Three Overwhelmingly Cool Aspects of the Party
FM Radio Broadcast as Guests Approached
Video Gallery of the Night of the Event
Image Gallery of the Night of the Event
Image Gallery of the Construction of the Event
Origin Story:
This party was “my” first party with my wife Lily, married in 2014. I hadn’t thrown a party since the Zombie Party in 2010. She told me she loved watching the Oscars with her oldest daughter Andrea, and I thought I should pick a party theme that would be something she could enjoy while showing her what I could do. We had planned our wedding together and I had planned our month-long honeymoon in three different countries, so she knew I could plan events, but hadn’t experienced a fully themed party before. We assigned this event a “B” level budget of time and money, but I was still able to pull off many aspects that were unique and over-the-top.
Description:
Many people throw Oscars Parties. We wanted to go beyond this level of party. We decided to have high-end food and drink, multiple large projections of screens of the awards ceremony, a selfie “booth” where guests could don accessories. We also added life-size cardboard cutouts of a few celebrities that were nominated at the awards that night. We rented many rows of seats, so it felt like you were watching in a theatre. We had separate video monitors that played videos that we had edited for the party beforehand that would playback trailers for each of the movies nominated. When a certain category came up in the awards ceremony, we had someone push a button on our IMS controller display that would playback the trailer on multiple screens off to the side of the main awards live streaming screen. The Title of the movie being nominated would show as well as the trailer for the movie that we downloaded off of YouTube. This was to enhance the “live” aspect of watching the awards, and wasn’t too different from what audiences watching the awards live would see. Little did we know that one of my daughters would advance in her makeup career to the point of doing the makeup for actors and presenters that went on-stage for the Oscars in the years to come. We also invited several people in the industry – whom I won’t name here but you may be able to spot from the photos. One guest couldn’t make our event because he was filming a movie in Europe. We did have a few lessor actors from Star Wars: A Force Awakens arrive as guests, so that was fun.
Each guest was assigned the name of someone who was being nominated that night. Interestingly, this limited our guest list to the number of people being nominated. I tried to make it random who ended up with what nomination – knowing that more esteemed nominations such as best actor and best director would be preferred. We broadcast an FM radio transmission that guests would hear as they approached the house, and we discussed many of their names on it so they would feel like they were special. Once their lanyard credentials that we had already mailed them were verified, we allowed each group of guests on the red carpet in batches. As guests walked down the carpet to the front door, they would walk by life-size cutouts of photographers with cameras and flashes. Where each flash was, it was cut out of the wood holding the cutout and a real camera flash was put in its place. As the IMS system sensed guests passing by, the flashes would go off, which guests could see and hear, and also I had the IMS system playback looping clapping that would increase in volume as they walked by and then decrease as they walked away. Multiple guest groups could walk along the carpet path this way, and would get individual experiences. Once they entered the house, they were handed a champagne drink to start the evening if they wanted one. When watching the awards, if a guest’s assigned nominated person won an award, they were given a small golden Oscars statue with a description of the award on it.
I’m very proud of this event. It was a lot of fun to make the radio broadcast, and create the red carpet effects, and have everything go mostly to plan, and all the technology worked just fine.
How it could have been better:
The bartender left something to be desired. It’s difficult to hire someone you don’t know and then rely on them. That’s why directors like to hire actors for projects that they know they can work with. It’s difficult to take a chance on someone new. Also, I would have liked to have rented a real Television camera and have each group of guests be interviewed with a few questions for their role at the end of the red carpet by someone before they entered the house. I could edit this video later and give it to guests.
I expected all guests to enter the house before dark so I did not bother to light the scene of the red carpet etc. While in fact this was true and worked as intended, it made it slightly difficult for anyone going in or out later in the evening even though there were flashes going off as you walked by – in fact this probably made things worse. Lesson learned.
Specs:
Date: February 28, 2016
Level Party: “B”
Food: Higher-end appetizers such as bacon-wrapped figs, large shrimp, chicken satay skewers
Drink: Open Bar, special champagne-based drink we created
Canned Music: None
Live Entertainment: Live TV broadcast
Staff: Lily, Enrique, Peter, Bob
Staff hired: Bartender, Security to validate credentials before guests were allowed on the red carpet
Actors: None
The “Three Overwhelmingly Cool” aspects of the party that we relied upon to make the party successful were:
– “Fancy” food/drink/attire/atmosphere
– Guests individually assigned actors that were nominated for awards that evening. Guests that “won” awards were given actual trophies by us, but were spared giving a speech.
– The Red Carpet entrance with “photographers” flashes going off and audio of “audience” clapping that got louder as you went by certain locations on the carpet, which made you feel like a star.
FM Radio Broadcast as Guests Approached:
As guests approached in their cars their “junket” packet gave them instructions to tune to a specific channel on the radio. As they approached the house, they could hear this broadcast, being looped for the first hour of the event as guests arrived. The broadcast included the names of a lot of guests, who we had “assigned” to people who were actually up for real awards for the Oscars that night. The Cast are: Jeff, Lily, Andrea, and Craig. Whenever we do these broadcasts, we include a lot of inside humor that we hope the guests pick up on as they drive in, to build the excitement.
