Events

Phillip Wong Productions

Non-Profit/Political

Involvement – Non-Profit+Political – Leave No Footprint

           As fundraisers have become more and more important to the various issues and causes, the need for bringing people together, crafting messages, and raising money has become integral in society. 

          I have believed that we are fortunate to be able to do the jobs we do, and we should all use the opportunities we have to try to make more of an impact, lend our skills, and use our deep knowledge and experience to help worthwhile contributions at every level.

            I have taken jobs that have budgets that are too small and ideas that are too big, but the projects can do much, much more, with knowledge, thought, experience, a cross-pollination of production platforms and unique perspective. 

            I worked on the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 in Pennsylvania, setting up field offices and helping to organize ground games – and while I thought Barack Obama was talented and intelligent, I chose that involvement because I understood Chicago politics, and what their priorities were.  Unlike corporate or government programs – we had to work with motivating people who were not being paid. Getting consistency, clarity, simplicity, and visible success while only having patience and calm as tools, was a different production form.
My attending and shooting the 2008 inauguration was a vindication of my belief that “process” can often overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

          The Guggenheim’s annual gala,  was an opportunity in the wake of  the 2008 financial meltdown.  They had to continue raising money, but had to cut costs and still bring in contributions.
They had chosen to have Peter Hoffman, the owner of Soho’s Savoy restaurant , cater the event and Savoy’s had never produced an event of over 400 before.
We closed all gaps, melding staff, for both service and kitchen, while producing with numerous constraints, and on the fly. Working on a loading dock was a different experience for Savoy, but a normal one for our team.

          A friend had been working with New York Times publishing as they launched a book tour for two books: The Essential NYTimes Cookbook, and In the Kitchen with Food You Love, with both Amanda Hesser and Melissa Clark.

           An event was planned at Chelsea Market with a tasting that would highlight a program to feed children at New York City schools. Amanda Hesser’s book had interviewed and published the recipes of dozens of chefs and 20 of them offered to do a tasting.

         But their budget was FAR off.    I agreed to helping with this project because of the School Food Program aspect, but accepted helping them, only if I could re-design the entire structure of the event.
It became an unusual event, but highly successful for both the chefs, the authors, the program directors, and the audience.          

           Food and Wine Magazine bestowed annual awards to new and emerging chefs, that was part of an overall program to support the restaurant industry’s growth. At this event, established restauranteurs provided tasting tables that I covered with photographed food elements that the restaurants were reknown for.
Another jewelry designer from London was launching a line in New York. The launch was sponsored and calculated to draw attention to new focus in the mining industry on responsible and sustainable mining techniques.
We pulled everything together including the security service and designing and constructing the design cases to showcase and internally light the jewels.

          Working seamlessly with countless other companies on the launching of films, awarding Elton John for his service to fundraising to combat HIV/AIDS at iconic New York buildings as varied as the Public Library and the cathedral of St. John The Divine, we have sought to utilize our experience with the need to raise funds for worthwhile causes.

Phillip Wong Productions

Events

A History In Events

          My interest in production has always been the creation of an idea into something real. I had worked with some production of fashion shows, lighting and stage build outs, and some film productions before 9/11, but after we began to recover, I worked on thousands of productions and began to see events as a way, in a changing, splintered world, that people connect.

          An event is a multi-layered process that weaves visual, audio, oratorical, historical, gastronomical, social, aspects of human connectivity together into short-form messaging.

           The great event productions, like every other production, seeks to control everything.It funnels the senses into positions of awareness of gratitude, celebration, adulation and appreciation. It notifies and satiates and piques the interest of a captive audience at multiple levels.

Phillip Wong Productions

Events

Wine Tasting Event for California Vineyard on New York Rooftop

           A large California vineyard wanted to do a luncheon wine tasting event for international press on the rooftop of a New York hotel.

          They commissioned us to design and construct an airy, sectioned space that would suggest a vineyard, as well as creating the table designs for the luncheon part of the event, and a separate tasting part.        

          Many vineyards have their own stemware for tastings and vineyard events, but since this event was across the continent, we also provided a line of Reidel stemware that would accommodate their multiple offerings.

Phillip Wong Productions

Events

Promotion for Travel Industry

The travel and tourism industry consists of travel, accommodations, entertainment and various aspects of the entire industry. This event was to encourage travel agents to recommend Italy as a destination in the United States.

Phillip Wong Productions

Events

Non-Profit Fundraising Events

          In our first project for a new client, they originally asked us about floral elements. It quickly expanded to everything beyond the booking of Carlos Santana, the Gypsy Kings, and Marc Anthony, and the staging, rigging, lighting and sound system that was already contracted.

         Everything else was up in the air.  From the auction to decor, dining, event flow, catering, photo ops, meet and greet, reception through the logistics and manpower needed to pull this through within the week.

Phillip Wong Productions

Events/Production/Planning

An Anatomy of an Event

          Events have many layers in the planning, the preparation, the budgets, the purchasing, the assembly, the implementation, the management and the close.

           It takes organization, direction, foresight, timelines and unlike so many other areas of production: there is no “do over.”

             Each production, film, manufacturing, construction, media, photography have elements of this: but all of them have timelines that can be postponed, extended, or revised. Events can not. Theater is similar, but most others are not.

          The most crucial part of event production is logical, practical, realistic, planning.  Assessing what needs to be done, what can be done, what we want to be done – needs to be considered with how we wish to implement this assessment.

          Without exaggeration, Phillip Wong Productions has worked with thousands (yes, thousands), of productions. In events, we have worked with the lighting, staging, electrical, structural, decor, logistics, workplace safety, catering, crew, employee, and crowd management, security, and budgeting.

          We have worked with the design and construction and implementation of build outs, and end-of-event dis-assembly.  More importantly, we have worked with all of the sub-contractors and crews to understand what their needs, and timelines are to complete varying expectations prior to, and throughout an event.

              As we work with the vendors and sub-contractors on timelines that allow sequential load-ins that would allow different teams to work at the same time, pulling together a project in modular fashions.

             This core element of Timeline Management is not unique for events, but is crucial to industry after industry. The opportunity of working in the event production business, is the sheer number of times we were able to do it to refine the process.

          In both floral and catering, the element of freshness and refrigeration adds urgency to timelines.