Banquet Seating

One area that continually causes problems at events in hotels and conference centers is the capacity of a dining room and the discomfort that overcrowding causes guests. It has been my experience that this usually results from a hotel or conference center trying to maximize profits by squeezing as many guests as possible into a room for dinner. I must qualify the statements that are to follow and say that they are general and not intended to denigrate any specific person or organization. 

For example, a given group may expect 560 guests to attend a farewell dinner and the conference hotel has a dining room that only should seat 500. The Catering Director will more often than not try to accommodate the extra 60 persons by adding places to the dining tables. If the hotel uses only 60-inch rounds, and the room should only have 50 tables, Catering may suggest that the extra 60 can be fitted in by adding an extra one or two places to all the tables. This could cause discomfort for those diners who must sit at these tables.

A long-time friend and colleague of mine, Mr. Bruno Patassini, the now-retired Catering Director of the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver, Canada, recommends the following table capacities and center-to-center distances in order to permit maximum comfort and optimum service.

Round Tables

• 60-Inch Diameter Rounds: This table is best suited to eight diners. Optimum spacing between tables is 12 feet, center-to-center or edge-to-edge. This permits adequate space for uncrowded dining and table service. A minimum of two feet between opposing chair backs should be allowed.

60-inch rounds

•  66-Inch Diameter Rounds: This is a compromise table size favored by a few hotels and venues, but it is not as popular as the 60-inch round. It does, however, allow for much more comfortable dining for eight persons. Center-to-center spacing is 12 1/2 feet when planning table layout.

• 72-Inch Diameter Rounds: This table is one size larger and the seating capacity is nine or ten persons. Optimum center-to-center table spacing is 13 feet, again to permit comfortable seating and safe table service by wait staff.

72-inch rounds

•  Rectangular Tables: The normal size for these tables is eight feet long x two and a half feet wide. They comfortably seat six guests using a general rule of thumb of approximately 24 inches width x 18 inches depth for each place setting. Less comfortably they can accommodate one more person on each end. The drawing below is an example of a creative layout of rectangular tables into small conversational groups.

Rectangular Tables

According to Patassini, table place settings should be 24 inches wide to allow for adequate space for each diner.

The distribution of tables throughout the event space is being explored much more creatively than in the past. As mentioned above, optimum table layout design within the event space should allow for a minimum of two feet between chairs at any two adjacent tables. Furthermore, tables should be optimally placed no closer to walls than two feet. This permits safe foot traffic and meal service and is useful in planning room layouts, most often done now on CADD drawings. Frequently, event planners and entertainment producers will bring entertainment right into the audience, which requires much more space in and around tables. Wide aisles and extended stages and dance floors are becoming more common, making the need for detailed floor plans using CADD that much more important.

If you are an event manager or producer, don't be persuaded to make your guests uncomfortable. Insist on maintaining the proper number of seats at tables and adequate distances between tables. In fact, put it into your contracts with venues and caterers to ensure it will happen.

Have You Considered How Productive You and Your Company Are?

Back in August of 2007 I had a blog post about Making a Profit in which I briefly mentioned productivity. I would like to now expand on that and give you a glimpse of the effect of the lack of productivity on your expenses and probably also on your bottom line. 


For simplicity, let's start by assuming that you, as an event planner, are the owner of a sole proprietorship and the only salaried employee in your company. Let's also assume for simplicity that your total overhead is $24,000 (consisting mainly of rent and assorted office expenses). On top of that you would like to personally earn $70,000 per year. That means that just to break even, you will have to bring in $94,000 worth of business in the year. You are someone who charges by the hour, so your hourly billings will have to total $94,000. 


Let's make a third assumption, unfortunately not a very realistic one, to illustrate the point I am trying to make. Let's assume that you know you will get enough business to occupy you for 100% of your available working hours. What, you ask, are your available working hours? Well, to determine what your time is worth in the simplest manner, you must divide the annual company overhead plus your salary as above, by 235 (the approximate average number of working days per year, allowing for 104 weekend days, 11 statutory holidays, and an average 15 working days vacation), then divide the result by 8 (number of working hours per day, so the grand total of annual working hours is thus 1880) to get the final answer. In the case stated above, the hourly fee you will have to charge is $50.00 ($94,000/1880). 


Now, here comes the tricky part. Nobody can devote 100% of their working hours to planning special events. It is impossible. You have many other demands on your time, such as non-client meetings, medical appointments, sales calls, and especially if you are a sole proprietor, lots more. BUT - you still need to make that $94,000! How do you do it. The only way is to charge more than the break-even fee to cover your non-productive time. You should be able to get a pretty good handle on how much time you spend on non-client related activities. At the very least, keep a log of how you spend your time for a couple of weeks and you will get a reasonable estimate. Let's assume that you take an average of 2 hours a day for non-client activities. That means that only 75% (6 out of 8 hours) of your time can be devoted to actual paying clients. You therefore must raise your hourly fee to $66.67 (i.e. $50 per hour divided by 0.75).


That is not the end of it, however. If you are really honest with yourself, how much time do you waste on other activities that are ridiculously non-productive? I ask this because I have had the personal experience myself and they are insidious; they creep up on you until they eat away large portions of your day. Such activities as learning how to use a computer program as simple as Word or Excel by trial and error because you never took a course or didn't think it was worthwhile, chatting on the phone with friends about non-business things, surfing the web, spending too much time on social media that do not benefit your business, extending a coffee break, running inefficient meetings and letting discussions get our of hand, and the list goes on. Again, if you are really honest and decide to track these non-business activities as well as the other non-client business activities, you may very well find that your non-productive time increases to 50% of your day. If that is the case, then your hourly fee will have to increase to $100.00 (i.e. $50.00/0.50). 


You may now be getting close to the point that the market will not bear this fee, especially if you are new to the business. Also, your time will now be extremely compressed so that the work you do may not be of the quality needed to adequately service clients. What to do? Well, you can hire another planner but that adds to overhead so you need more business. You can work more than 8 hours a day but that can be very stressful. You can cut your own salary, but you need that to live. You can actually cut overhead by lowering your expenses or your rent or whatever, or you can be more productive by minimizing non-productive, non-business related activities. That is the best and the cheapest. So if you are in this dilemma, look very closely at how you spend an average day at the office and how productive you are. 


The other influence on your fee is, of course, the amount of business you have, which is what I conveniently eliminated by my assumption. If we bring that back into the mix, then the dilemma becomes much more complicated. After you have been in business for a few years, you can usually get an estimate of what your annual average amount of business is and that can help in determining your fee. If, for example, you have kept good records and can make an estimate that your annual business occupies about 50% of your time, then this must be factored into the calculation of your fee. If you do that, you will thus see that your fee of $100 per hour (remember, you are still very non-productive) will need to increase to $200 per hour i.e. $100/0.50). Well, this is pretty exorbitant so your solution is now not only to cut down on non-productive time but also to do one of a number of other things, namely generate more business as a first step and/or lower your salary expectations until you do generate enough business. 


I hope this helps you start to think about becoming more productive.

Event Lighting Design: Part Three

Direction

For special event lighting, there are three areas of concern with respect to lighting direction: stage and entertainment lighting, décor and theme lighting, and ambient lighting. In all cases, the effect of directional lighting is similar, but the desired outcome may be different. Let us examine the different directions that may be used to light people or objects and then see what the differences may be.

We begin with some illustrations of lighting people from different angles. Figure 1 illustrates front lighting. Although this direction gives the best visibility, it also tends to make objects and people appear “flat.” For lighting people and stage shows, this is one direction that is absolutely necessary so the audience can see what is happening onstage. Generally speaking, in almost every instance of special event entertainment, some component of continuous front lighting will be needed, even if it is not fully bright or not white.

On the other hand, for ambient lighting and theme décor lighting, front lighting is not always desirable. If lighting walls, for instance, to achieve a general mood, direct lighting is less desirable than uplighting as it tends to highlight the flaws in the wall. However, if a large painted mural is part of the décor, front lighting may be the right choice in order to give the best visibility and render the mural scene more realistic. The same would apply if the front lighting is a gobo and a clear, proportionally correct pattern is required to be seen on the wall.

Figure1: Front Lighting 

Figure 2 illustrates top lighting, which, for people, adds shadows to faces but also adds nice highlights to hair and shoulders, which onstage can help to separate people from backgrounds. For décor purposes, top lighting is often used to light table centers with pin spots or automated fixtures, to give crisp, undistorted beams of light throughout the event space. It is also used for highlighting décor vignettes and for floor lighting.

Figure 2: Top Lighting

Figure 3 illustrates rear lighting, which is very useful for adding dimension to persons or objects onstage and for separating them from the background. Similarly, for décor it can help to add a third dimension and make a display seem more “alive.”

Figure 3: Rear Lighting 

Figure 4 illustrates side lighting, which is highly desirable in some form when lighting people onstage as it also adds dimension and makes the body shape more obvious. In the same way, it can add shape to décor. However, when lighting flat décor as in the case of murals, it tends to highlight flaws in the surface and is not recommended.

Figure 4: Side Lighting 

The final direction for lighting is under or up lighting, as shown in Figure 5. When used to light people, this is associated with a ghoulish, macabre effect as seen in movies and is not desirable unless it is being used for a special effect. However, for décor, especially for ambient lighting, it is one of the most effective directions, particularly for uplightng walls, ceilings, and backdrops.

Figure 5: Up Lighting

Movement

A related aspect of direction is movement. Movement indicates any change in lighting that gives life to the lighting and brings it closer to the natural world. It is usually of timed duration and can include:

• A change in direction
• A change in color
• A change in intensity
• A change in distribution, such as the appearance of different gobos from the same fixture
• The movement of an offstage light such as a followspot or automated fixture.

According to Williams (1999), “movement may be rapid or very subtle, slow and imperceptible. Such may be the case of a designer that provides a slow shift in sunlight from one side of the stage to the other throughout the duration of a play. The audience may not notice the shift; however, they often may ‘feel’ the result of the change emotionally...Up until recently, movement was probably the least utilized quality of light by the stage LD. This all changed in the 1980s when the automated lighting fixture was born. The modern automated fixture can now move physically – directing its beam from one part of the stage to another (or any other area within the event space – author). In addition, the automated fixture can ‘move’ from one color or effect to another, at any speed. The changes and combinations of intensity, form, distribution, color, and movement are endless.”

I hope these basic explanations of event lighting will help you and your lighting designer come up with some wonderful events.

References:

Williams, Bill. (1999). Stage Lighting Design 101, Edition 2.d. Retrieved January 2006 from www.mts.net/williams5/sld.

Event Lighting Design: Part Two

Color 

As with the design tools of event décor, color is the most noticeable and strongest quality of light. Indeed, all light is colored, and white light is simply a mixture of all visible wavelengths (colors) between infrared and ultraviolet radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. One of the keys to good lighting design is a thorough understanding of color. We begin with some definitions.


Hue is the pure form of a color with no white, black, or grey added. Tint is the mixture of a hue with white. Shade is the mixture of a hue with black. Tone is the mixture of a hue with black and white (grey). It is sometimes also called value. Saturation refers to the amount of hue in a color mixture. For example, a pure red color (like fire-engine red) would be said to have a high saturation of red. Figure 1 below illustrates these relationships in a triangular form.

Figure 1: Tints, Tones, and Shades (Courtesy Gillette, 2000 - Redrawn by author) 

In the world of lighting, the color wheel takes on a slightly different appearance from the color wheel associated with décor (which uses pigments). For light, the primary colors are red, blue, and green. The secondary colors are yellow (mixture of red and green), cyan (mixture of green and blue), and magenta (mixture of red and blue). Figure 2 illustrates a lighting color wheel (also called a visual or RGB color wheel).

Figure 2: Lighting Color Wheel

The two differing color wheels, the one for pigment and the one for light, are often confusing since they do not make logical sense when mixing colors. Technically, as pointed out by Fitt and Thornley (2002), “the lessons learned from mixing the colors of paint are somewhat different to those for mixing the colors of light. It has to be realized that light is the source of all color, but pigments in paint (or in dyed fabrics – author) are simply reflections or absorbers of parts of the light that illuminates them If a beam of red light and a beam of green light are superimposed the result is yellow. On the other hand, if we mix red and green paint, we get rather a nasty looking ‘brown black’ color. When using light, all spectral colors can be created by adding various component parts of red, green, and blue light and the system used is called ‘addition,’ ultimately creating white. Pigments derive their colors by subtracting parts of the spectrum, therefore the system with pigments is called ‘subtraction’ and ultimately creates black.” 

For special events, the LD is frequently called upon to not only light stage performances, but also decorative elements. These are particularly sensitive to the interaction between the hues of light and pigment hues, since most décor is pigment-based (e.g. fabrics, painted surfaces, costumes). Table 1 illustrates the interaction between the two types of color, and can serve as a guide for what a decorative element or person looks like when subjected to a certain color of light. 

Color of Pigment	Color of Light
	Violet	Blue	Blue-Green	Green	Yellow	Orange	Red	Purple
Violet	Deep violet	Dark violet	Dark violet	Violet	Dark brown	Dark brown	Dark gray	Dark violet
Blue	Light blue	Deep blue	Light bluish gray	Light blue	Dark bluish gray	Black	Gray	Blue
Blue-Green	Dark blue	Very dark blue	Dark bluish gray	Dark green	Greenish blue	Dark greenish brown	Black	Dark blue
Green	Bluish brown	Light olive green	Light greenish gray	Intense green	Bright green	Dark green	Dark gray	Dark greenish brown
Yellow	Scarlet	Greenish yellow	Greenish yellow	Greenish yellow	Intense yellow	Yellow orange	Red	Orange
Orange	Scarlet	Light brown	Light brown	Light brown	Orange	Intense orange	Intense orange red	Scarlet
Red	Scarlet	Purplish black	Dark maroon	Maroon	Bright red	Orange red	Intense red	Red
Purple	Reddish purple	Dark violet	Maroon	Purplish violet	Light brown	Maroon	Reddish brown	Deep purple

Table 1: Interaction of Colored Light with Colored Pigment (Courtesy Fuchs, 1929) 

To add to the confusion, additive and subtractive color mixing are also found in the lighting world alone. Additive color mixing refers to the combining of two or more colors to form a new color. As illustrated in Figure 3, the combining of red and blue light sources, for example, will produce a new color, magenta. Subtractive color mixing refers to the filtering of light. When light passes through a single colored gel or filter, only the wavelength corresponding to the color of the filter will pass through it. Figure 4 illustrates this concept.

Figure 3: Additive Color Mixing in Light (Courtesy Gillette, 2000 – Redrawn by author)

Figure 4: Subtractive Color Mixing in Light (Courtesy Gillette, 2000 – Redrawn by author) 

The last important concept of color in lighting design is the meaning of color. It is a well-known fact that  every color has certain emotions attached to it. It is these emotions that the LD tries to enhance in order to make his design more effective.

My final post on lighting design will discuss direction and movement.


References:

• Fitt, Brian, and Joe Thornley. (2002). Lighting Technology: A Guide for Television, Film and Theater, Second Edition. Woburn, MA: Focal Press.
• Fuchs, Theodore. (1929). Stage Lighting. Little, Brown, and Company. Retrieved January 31, 2006 from www.rosco.com/us/technotes/filters/technote_1.asp#4.
• Gillette, J. Michael. (2000). Theatrical Design and Production: An Introduction to Scene Design and Construction, Lighting, Sound, Costume, and Makeup, Fourth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Event Lighting Design: Part One

Lighting can be thought of as one of many raw materials the event producer has at his or her disposal. It is the job of the Lighting Designer or LD (usually from a subcontracted lighting supplier), to manipulate the light beams emanating from fixtures or luminaires to achieve the look desired by the event producer or manager. The LD has five qualities of light that can be varied and massaged to do this. These qualities are intensity, distribution, color, direction, and movement. Over the course of the next two or three blog posts, I will cover the basics of these qualities.


Intensity 

In simplest terms, this refers to the strength of a light source. However, there are some other relative measurements that are also associated with a light source and what happens when the light is projected over a distance and strikes an object.


Intensity is the strength of a light source (e.g. the actual lamp inside the light fixture), or the light output. It is measured in lumens or candles. Illuminance is the light level actually falling on the surface of an object being lit. It is measured in lux (metric) or foot-candles (imperial). 1 foot-candle = 10.76 lux. Brightness is the effect of light leaving the surface of an object being illuminated. It is what the human eye actually sees. It is affected by the intensity of the light source, the distance from the source to the object, and the properties of the object (e.g. color and texture). It is measured in foot-lamberts. The figure below illustrates the differences amongst these three terms.

        Light Strength 

Actually, this relationship can be calculated mathematically using what is known as the inverse-square law, E = I/ D², where E is the illuminance in foot-candles, I is the luminous intensity in lumens, and D is the distance in feet between the source and the point of calculation on the surface. For example, using a light source that produces 6000 lumens, the light density on a surface 10ft. away would be 60 foot-candles = 6000/(10)(10), and 20ft. away would be 15 foot-candles = 6000/(20)(20).

Generally speaking, objects that appear bright draw more attention to themselves. Because of this, it is the job of the LD to ensure that those objects needing attention, whether they be performers or decorative, are appropriately bright. 

Distribution 

Distribution refers to the manner in which light strikes a surface and reveals an object.

It can be applied to how objects appear, in that they might be softly lit as part of a larger scene with light that has no sharp edges. On the other hand, they may be individually lit with a small, sharply defined, single light beam.

On another level, distribution can be applied to the appearance of light that uses an image projector of some sort, such as a gobo in front of an ellipsoidal fixture or an actual projector. These in turn produce certain desired images on a surface such as a wall or scrim. 

On a third level, distribution can be applied to the shape of a light beam itself when viewed through smoke or haze effects. 

I will cover color in the next post.