CREATOR Q&A WITH SNA DISPLAYS: LEFTCHANNEL
As any good digital signage consultant will tell you, planning and executing quality creative content is critical to getting the most out of a display asset. Even the most high-end LED display on the market won’t live up to its potential if ownership doesn’t dedicate appropriate resources to content creation.
Fortunately, SNA Displays has worked with many talented creators who posses the skills necessary to design eye-popping visuals that make our LED screens stand out. We started this creator highlight series to recognize content studios and inspire further creative applications of LED display technology in our industry.
In this edition of Creator Q&A with SNA Displays, we feature leftchannel, an Ohio-based design consultancy studio that focuses on motion to tell stories and drive compelling brand experiences. You can find leftchannel’s work at Rise Hollywood, Sheraton Dallas Hotel, Centene, and Typeface’s AI app launch video
What technologies and trends do you think are going to have the biggest impact on the brand marketing, content creation, and design fields?
That’s always a tricky question, because the technologies come and go so fast that it’s very unlikely you could identify the one that really will make the most significant impact. Actually, technology needs to be somewhat transparent, because that’s what’s going to make your experience feel dated the fastest. You can watch Blade Runner today and it doesn’t feel too dated because of all the practical effects, but watch a CG movie from 5 years ago and you already see its age. If people want to build experiences that will last they will need to have a larger focus on the content, story, and emotional impact on the audience and use technology that serves that purpose.
As a project manager for Client Service Group, Ron Kish is responsible for live-event support, including several of the sports and event venues in SNA Displays’ portfolio. Ron has nearly 30 years of experience in the live-events industry, having previously been the operations manager at Continental Airlines Arena and the vice president of arena production at Madison Square Garden.
If you watched the 2024 NBA All-Star Game and peripheral events a few weeks ago, the Big Ten Football Championship, or any Indianapolis Colts home game since 2022, you likely saw more than a few of the 50 LED video screens SNA Displays installed during a major technology overhaul at Lucas Oil Stadium. As part of its agreement with the Capital Improvement Board of Managers of Marion County, the entity charged with financing and management of Lucas Oil Stadium, SNA Displays provided in-person event support at the stadium. So, we’ve had the privilege of supporting these and other major events at the stadium, one of the most active high-profile event venues in the U.S.
In addition to ensuring that our screens captured all of the excitement and action of the centerpiece All-Star Game, we supported the Ruffles NBA All-Star Celebrity Game, AT&T Slam Dunk competition, Starry 3-Point Contest, and Kia Skills Challenge leading up to the main attraction.
As a project manager for Client Service Group (CSG), our managed services business unit, my job is Day 2 Support, so I’ve been on hand for every Indianapolis Colts game of the last two years. In a nutshell, we provide proactive monitoring as preventative maintenance (making sure we detect problems before they occur) as well as on-site or remote support during events.
That means CSG checks in 72 hours before the event to begin testing everything to make sure there aren’t any foreseeable issues and dispatch a service technician as needed. There’s an entire ecosystem involved in sporting events that goes way beyond the video boards themselves. With our expertise in events production, we can fill in knowledge gaps the main event staff may have. We already know what to expect and how to minimize failure. Plus, we have backups and backups to the backups just in case.
However, since no system is perfect, we’re also on hand for unforeseeable problems. We know what typically goes wrong and have a plan to deal with it so no-one feels that cold grip of panic when electronics go down with millions of eyeballs on it. If it can be fixed, CSG will fix it.
