Walmart Associates Week

This was Thrasos Media Group’s seventh year screen producing and providing the media playback team and media server gear for the yearly Walmart event. Formerly Walmart Shareholders, it is now transformed to Walmart Associates Week, a full company celebration . Another big change this year was that Thrasos was asked to be the Production EIC on the project. Being the only department to address all the pixels each year, it just made sense to broaden our scope and attempt to make the project more synchronous across all parts of video, taking what we know of our workflows and how we interface with the other departments into full practice. This year the entire pixel canvas was 14792×4800 and TMG partnered with long-time video vendor Creative Technology to help bring the production company LEO Events’ vision to life. Chris Allen served as the production EIC on the project under the overall Technical Director Steve Barrett of BCAD. He was assisted by Sam Moergen of LEO who focused on the talent overnights. Chris was lucky enough to step into the well-polished shoes left by Mike Anderson of Watch Dog Technical Group and really was able to take the organization to the next level using TMG tried and true methods.

Cameron Yeary led the media server team as screens producer/programmer and brought a team of four others to wrangle the two, two-hour shows, as well as a concert night. Peter Shay was lead media programmer with Clay Avery programming the intense non-speaker-supported CEO and other C-suite presentations. Zach Heimbegner wrangled the over 4 TB of media produced by Emile Wolsky of Inter-Tain Productions and Xite Labs. Zach also assisted in programming and organizing the very fast-paced show that involved seven different live name performance acts. All of this was media-managed by Stacey Ladd and Rachel Heitzer of Leo Events who worked with the executive and creative teams for months prior to load in. LEO’s Executive Producer David Kenyon leads the entire production along with Kelly Hunt leading the Associates Celebration Show, Amelia Seaton leading the U.S. Associates Show, and Marcus Guerriero producing the concert night. With Acts ranging from Lizzo to Imagine Dragons to Usher, this show has a lot of moving parts, including four moving LED walls. Hosts and special Guests included Peyton Manning and Paris Hilton, to name a few.

Thrasos can’t wait for the next one to come around and for us to dial in this process more precisely and push it further to create both efficiencies for LEO as well as cost savings.

Credits

Emile Wolsky, Inter-Tain Productions
Stacey Ladd, Content Producer/Coordinator, LEO Events
Rachel Heitzer, Content Producer/Coordinator, LEO Events
David Kenyon, Executive Producer, LEO Events
Kelly Hunt, Producer, Associates Celebration, LEO Events
Amelia Seaton, Producer, U.S. Associates, LEO Events
Marcus Guerriero, Producer, Concert Evening, LEO Events