President and principal consultant at Nautilus Entertainment Design, Jim Tetlow has been negotiating the shutdown of the events and entertainment industry with aplomb. From cruise ship technical systems to theme parks by way of theatre consulting and lighting design, his company thrives on diversification, a strategy that has proved especially savvy in recent months. Live Design chats with Tetlow on his background, current projects, and the future in the age of COVID-19.
Live Design: Can you talk a little about Nautilus and how the company was started and developed?
Jim Tetlow: I graduated from CMU in the late '70s and went into television lighting, where I spent all of the 1980s with Imero Fiorentino Associates, first in NY and then in L.A. Although most of my work was in television, the company was diversified; this is where I did my first corporate shows, and was exposed to architectural lighting and facility design. My wife and I started our company in 1990, while we were living in Los Angeles. In 1991, I had a show running at the Stardust in Las Vegas and some executives from Carnival Cruise Lines saw it, and called me the next morning to see if I’d light some of the shows on their ships. That led to theatre consulting on Carnival Destiny in 1996, which also included the lighting, rigging, and special effects systems. After that project, Carnival asked me to also take on the A/V systems for the next ships, and that’s when we started adding staff. Now, in addition to those tasks, we also design the architectural lighting, broadcast systems, digital signage, etc. To date, we have provided design, consulting, and commissioning services on over 55 cruise ships across seven or eight brands. Having a team in place with those skills, we then started providing the same services for land-based hospitality projects, especially Native American Casinos. Along the way, we started working on government projects, including A/V system design for the military and lighting design for the Architect of the Capitol. The most recent expansion has been into theme parks where we provide all of the same services and also project manage installations. We also continue to provide lighting design services for corporate shows and exhibits with clients in the automotive and technology sectors.
LD: You have been involved in the cruise ship design process for quite some time. Are there new ships on the horizon?
JT: I’ve been involved with cruise ships for 29 years, and I’d say that there are as many new ships in development as ever. We are working on projects with delivery dates in 2023 and 2024. I’m very optimistic that the cruise industry will rebound operationally because they will be forced to become the experts on COVID-19 detection and mitigation. Although the current ships due to deliver this year are being delayed due to the shipyards closing down for COVID-19, none of them have been cancelled.
LD: What about the theme park industry, another of your touchstones?
JT: Again, I’m very optimistic that this industry will rebound. We are working on a very large new park in Beijing that’s due to open early next year, and as soon as China will let Americans back in, we will have a team on the ground. There was a Blooloop article a few days ago regarding how many of the theme parks in Wuhan Province are reopening with reduced capacities and social distancing in place.
JT: It’s incredibly important to be diversified and this became apparent during the 2008 financial crisis. Many of our shows were cancelled, but all of the long-term cap-ex projects continued on pace. Also, there can be opportunities in these crises. A lot of the Obama stimulus money was spent on military base infrastructure upgrades, and we picked up a lot of projects during that period. Looking at the current situation, all of our live events into the fall have been cancelled, but we are still busy with cruise ship design and government projects. I expect that sometime in June or July we will be able to start up our onsite theme park work in China.
LD: What about the industrial markets? Is there a shift to streaming events? Will they be designed and produced in any empty room for the online audience, or...?
JT: We have had discussions with two clients in the automotive sector about live streaming a broadcast from either their headquarters, or a facility in their home city. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen in the short term because companies still need to communicate with their sales teams. Nobody has committed yet, but I think that’s because people are still waiting to see how long the lockdown will last. By the way, the Presidential Debates are still scheduled to be presented from four different university locations this fall. We don’t know if there will be a live audience, or a drastically reduced audience, or no audience at this time.
LD: Do you have any personal predictions of what the design fields might look like, or how they might have transitioned, due to COVID-19?
JT: A few weeks ago, we had the annual meeting of the American Society of Theatre Consultants on Zoom. I posed the question “Did anybody think that we would need to design different performance spaces moving forward?” Personally, I still don’t have an answer to that, but I think about it all the time. We are in the business of bringing people together, and that’s the worst thing to be doing right now. I think the first long-term casualty may be movie theaters because we have all gotten use to streaming content. I can envision people investing more in their home theatre equipment rather than going to a movie theatre. I can’t even guess about other live events until we see how the curve of the virus proceeds in the next several months.
LD: Are there lessons to be learned from this experience in terms of a business owner?
JT: Diversify, diversify, diversify, and never over expand. I think that this is also good advice for individuals in our business. If you are a lighting designer or scenic designer, try to diversify your design work beyond your current client base into other areas including exhibits, television, and architecture.
LD: What advice would you give to the 2020 college grads?
JT: It’s a horrible time to enter the job market, but there are things you can do to prepare for the time after all of this. First, increase your skills. If you want to work in anything other than theatre, you need to move beyond Vectorworks into the Autodesk products. 3D Autocad and Revit-savvy designers and project managers will be in demand. Before you graduate, download the student versions. Rendering skills will also be in-demand for presentations. Create some sample projects to send to potential employers. Learn a foreign language that will set you apart from your peers. If you are a lighting designer, download the free Dialux software and learn how to photometrically model a space. Also, don’t stop sending out letters and resumes. Good companies are always recruiting, even if they don’t have positions open. We may not be hiring right now, but we are still looking at resumes for lighting designers, A/V designers and project managers for when things start up again.