Empire Creates Innovative Press Event to Market one of the World's Best-Known Brands, Star Wars.

June 2004. New York City, NY, TriBeCa Grand Hotel

When LucasFilm and 20th Century FOX, the producer and distributor, respectively, of the Star Wars series of motion pictures, sought to create an innovative press event, they turned to Empire for the execution. The event was held to help cultivate long lead press (i.e. press who are creating stories which will run several months later) for the release of the Star Wars DVD Trilogy, a special package of the first 3 Star Wars films. For this event, LucasFilm sought to create a high quality live presentation which would feature both footage of the new DVDs as well as presentations by Mark Hammell who played Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie, Irvin Kirzner who directed The Empire Strikes Back and several of the special effects wizards who worked on the movies including Frank Oz, Jim Ward, Rick Dean and John Lowry.

This presentation took place in the Grand Theater of the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and was preceded by a luncheon in the Café area where guests viewed humorous compilations of media featuring Star Wars references. As a centerpiece for the program, Empire created a living room set that was a pure time warp from May 1977, when the original Star Wars motion picture was released. The living room featured an 'Infinity' mirror table, thick shag carpeting, beanbag chairs, modular plexi-glass lamps, side tables and shelving and a wide variety of authentic props including an Atari game player, Peter Frampton & Barry Manilow album covers, paperback books, 'Smiley face' cushions, Farah Fawcett posters, etc. Naturally, both the theater and the DVD demo room had to feature the highest quality of visual projection and audio installation and Empire worked with LuCasFilm, JBL and THX to install a state-of-the-art THX sound system in the event space.

For this project, Empire played a variety of roles including site selection and acquisition, coordination of guest room logistics, management of all A/V systems, decor, set-design, oversight of food & beverage and onsite management.