SkillsUSA 2022 National Leadership & Skills Conference

White Tie Productions was thrilled to partner with SkillsUSA for their 2022 National Leadership and Skills Conference.

This premier conference brought together over 12,000 of the best and brightest students from around the country in Atlanta, GA as they network and compete in trade-skills competitions judged by industry professionals. White Tie supported three General Sessions in the State Farm Arena - an Opening Session, a Recognition Session including a performance by international recording artist, Flo Rida, and a Grand Awards Session with hundreds of student awards presented - as well as provided support for 40+ breakout rooms in the Georgia World Congress Center.

White Tie provided full-service production including pre-production elements such as transportation and venue logistics, session scripting, stage design as well as live production technical elements including LED video walls, live cameras, concert-grade audio, special effects, a lighting package with over 100 fixtures and scenic fabrication and installation.

Complete Event Production

Starting 18 months out, our team collaborated alongside SkillsUSA to conceive and design a stage render and floor-plan that emphasized these three key goals: Inspire their audience with a breathtaking and broadcast-grade stage set, maximize available seating in the venue, and ensure the floorplan allowed the event to run smoothly while adhering to best safety practices.

During this development process, our design team was closely involved and was able to share conceptual graphics mockups as the stage renders developed. This allowed our team & SkillsUSA to conceptualize how the LED canvas would eventually be used to present their brand and content.

Our pre-production continued extensively leading up to the conference. This included:

A comprehensive graphics design & approval process

We utilized our proprietary scripting software to create a comprehensive and easily navigated event script for each of the three shows. This allowed us to collaborate with multiple departments and ensured everyone was on the same page from the earliest possible stage.

Integrated scripting & staging support

After SkillsUSA provided drafts and content of all scripts, our stage manager and production staff worked closely with their team to review and finalize spoken content as well as lighting, audio, video, and graphics cues to bring their vision to life. This included finessing the staging and presentation positions based on our graphic design and camera placement to maximize the impact their VIPs had on stage.

Full narrative music scripting

At White Tie, we believe sound is half of what you see. After receiving the script outline from SkillsUSA, our audio designer curated a playlist tailored to each section of the script, choosing audio tracks that underscored and complemented its intended emotion.

By building and integrating reference tracks for this music within our script, we had the opportunity to collaborate with SkillsUSA throughout the development of each show.

Creative Media Design

In addition to our all-LED stage design, our team designed and executed a total takeover of the LED screens within State Farm Arena. This included, but was not limited to the center-hung jumbotron, multiple stories of banner ribbons and vomitorium signage. In total, over 16 million pixels were driven by our Watchout and Resolume media servers.

As part of this package, we delivered hundreds of animated graphics, immersing the audience with on-screen elements that came to life and seamlessly transitioned throughout every session.

Prior to the conference, we delivered five custom videos to introduce special award sections. This work included scripting, voiceover recording, motion graphics and editing. On-site, our team filmed b-roll during all conference events, competitions and sessions to complete a recap video that played during the final conference session.