Designing for Stars, Rain and the Ocean - "Something In The Water", Musical Festival, Virginia Beach

Ok, before you can ask... No, I didn't have the pleasure of meeting hometown celebrity Pharrell Williams but ...

I did get a change to meet Ava DuVernay. Wait, let me know back up a little bit. In April of last year a representative from Something In The Water reached out to me from California. Turns out Vivid Expressions was highly recommended for this special project. How special, well, NETFLIX was going to premiere a film form ARRAY , the production studio of Ava DuVernay. If that name sounds familiar it may be from some of the movies she's directed including, "A Wrinkle In Time", "Selma", and last years highly acclaimed film "When They See Us".

This project was to premium the film, "The Burial of Kojo" at Something In The Water. The original plan was to showcase the movie during screening on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront at Neptune Park under the stars during the musical festival. Our job would be to transform the park into a magical, stylized atmosphere that mimicked the feel of the movie with decor, flowers and creative accents. I listened to the representative and what the clients envisioned for the event.

She sent pictures of inspiration and I sketched out the concepts for the designs we were going to create and our design production team would install... they were thrilled. Sounds easy h'uh? Well, are you ready for the twist? Less that 72 hours before the first night of the 3 day festival a major storm was predicted to come through on Friday night... the night of the movie premiere.

Now, keep in mind, the representative lived in California. So, I did a site walk-through at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) which was just a few minutes from the Oceanfront as an alternate site. I recorded a virtual tour and sent it to them. I also started sketching plans for transforming multiple areas of the venue including meet and greet area, photo op areas, decor accents for the main museum theater and whimsical transformation for overflow viewing area. Which we brought flawlessly to life. Everyone said it turned out to be an amazing night. The clients called our work "magical".

ONE OF THE CONCEPT DRAWINGS