edwardjamescoco
An overdue catch-up . . .
Have I started a post with that title before? Probably. It feels like every time I start a new blog post I'm way overdue for an update. Best to put my head down and just jump into it. . .

I'll work backwards from the most recent. . . earlier this week we did the CMT Awards red carpet and pre-show events. I've worked on this event for about eight years and even though it isn't the largest red carpet event of my year I still find it to be one of my favorite shows. The talent is happy and friendly, and there's always a very relaxed and celebratory feeling to the event. I appreciate those things as I grow older. Some productions are just a little too uptight and unnecessarily stressful, and those things never lead to people performing at their best.

Not to imply that the Grammy's were too uptight! Everyone loves being at the Grammy Awards, so that red carpet event is always a big party. I'm just happy that it finally happened this year. The forced delay (Covid) pushed us a month and a half into the year, and moved us to Las Vegas. But thankfully it was at venue that was very familiar to us, the MGM Grand.

It was my sixth year of doing the Grammys Red Carpet. The production used to feel so giant but now it feels comfortable and manageable, which allows me to focus more on the design and less on the overwhelming workload. That's one of my favorite things about repeat jobs. Once you get a handle on all of the mechanics and moving parts you can shift all of your attention on creating.

And now that I'm into the thick of this post, I can see that I really needed an update. I've skipped so much this year. I suppose that means I've been busy. Well here is the quick version. . . . Pictured above is a little red carpet event we did for the renaming of a street at Paramount Studios in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Godfather. A pretty straightforward event with a graphic wall and some dimensional elements. But they're really particular about the way the Godfather is portrayed (for good reason) so we had a lot of graphic mockups for this one before landing on the final.

Speaking of graphics . . . iHeart AltEgo happened again. That show is usually a lot of banners and branded elements. We didn't have an interview stage this year, so the project was just a little smaller than usual. We also did a red carpet for the Bud Light SuperBowl concert at the Staples Center in LA. Sorry, the "Crypto.com Arena", as it's now called.

And while we were at the Super Bowl, we created this photo op for the NFL Honors event prior to the game. It was a nice little activation for talent photos that sat adjacent to their red carpet.

I've mentioned before how much I love these little activations. It's great to have a client that has a little part of a bigger overall event, but still wants to put some money and time into making that part as unique as possible. The process is fast-paced when creating these. But for some reason they always seem to produce some really cool results.
Ok, I have a few other things but I'm going to have to wait until another blog post for those. This post is getting long, I need to get back to work!
Thanks for reading.