By Jordan Green, Lighting Designer, Livewire
When planning a live event, one of the simplest ways to upgrade the look and feel of a room is to decide where your audiovisual and lighting equipment lives. At Livewire, we can help you make the best decisions for your event across traffic flow, fire code, and the overall ambiance of your venue.
While ground-supported floor stands are great for smaller setups, moving your lighting, audio, and video gear to overhead rigging is a straightforward step that can significantly improve the guest and presenter experience!
One of the most noticeable benefits of rigging is how it cleans up the room. By moving equipment overhead, you increase floor capacity, reclaiming square footage for seating, service, or a larger dance floor. It also creates superior sightlines; guests enjoy an unobstructed view of the stage without having to look around a forest of speaker or projector stands.
From a safety standpoint, rigging allows for controlled cable management, keeping power and data lines tucked neatly in the ceiling, rather than taped across floors where they pose tripping hazards (if someone trips hard enough, it could derail your show, too!).
Overhead rigging also offers a level of technical precision ground stands simply cannot match. Our audio team can achieve optimal sound dispersion and coverage by angling speakers to reach the back of the room evenly, and use precise lighting angles to ensure presenters look their best while keeping the bright lights out of their eyes. It also ensures perfect video projection alignment, hitting the screen “dead-on” for a sharp, consistent, vibrant image.
Beyond the clear technology benefits, truss acts as a skeleton for branding and decor, from sponsor banners to floral installations, and it takes color well from LED lighting to help brand your event!
Truss systems are modular and scalable, and can be accommodated in almost any venue. Furthermore, using a venue’s standardized weight distribution points is often the most stable way to support heavy gear.
While we know rigging sounds expensive, trust us: it’s not! The cost of flying truss is often offset by reduced labor costs; because the setup is streamlined, we spend less time leveling individual stands and managing miles of cable tape.
While overhead rigging is a great tool, practical constraints may make ground-support the better choice. In rooms with low ceiling heights, overhead trussing can feel crowded. Additionally, if a venue has rigging point limitations and isn’t rated to hold weight, a sleek ground-based setup is the safest way to go. Throughout our planning process, Livewire is there to advise you on what’s best for your vision, event requirements, and budget.
Ultimately, choosing to rig is about removing the “clutter” of production, allowing your guests to be fully immersed in the event without the distraction of the technology.
