The Wall

[BromleyHall94]

I got my Paint the Hall Orange poster up and does it look beautiful.
I don’t have much of an apartment to have a good Illini wall, so I’d like to see what other people have.
http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/Gallery/data/500/10wall-med.JPG

[Dan]

That's a great PTHO poster, much improved from the first edition 2001 the I have. And the classic Kenny Battle poster, nice.

[The Sprouting Divot]

I received the WF PTHO poster for Xmas, but that incompetent moron Satan Claus managed to put a nasty crease in it.

Lucky for me The Wife Unit is a preservation librarian who can fix it, or else I would have to take it out of his bearded, whiskey-soaked a55 next winter.

I'd like to see all of the various panoramic/360 degree shots from through all the years of Illini athletic events. My dad has an awesome panoramic shot of Memorial Stadium during our win over Michigan in '83, as well as some less significant event at the AH from the same time period. They're pretty pretty...

[HouseofPaign]

Hey Divot, next time you are in the Paign. Head to Brad LaPayne photography. He is the one who took the PTHO shot, but he has a bunch of other shots of Illini sports and events at his store.

[The Sprouting Divot]

LaPaign--Has LaPayne been doing those sorts of shots for a long time, or just fairly recently? I feel like the first I heard his name was within the last couple of years...

[HouseofPaign]

No, he has been doing them for a while. He just got more popular since the PTHO deal. He also does other panoramic shots. He has Wrigley field (first night game etc) cityscapes, ground zero, and plenty of U of I stuff. Football and Basketball since the 80s. Plus shots around campus. I was in his store for the first time last week.

[The Sprouting Divot]

Cool. I'll check it out sometime. Right now might not be the best time, as I'm broke as a joke...

[Dan]

Yours for just $10 >> (http://www.lapayne.com/)

http://www.lapayne.com/pics/PTHO-2004-poster-lg.gif (http://www.lapayne.com/ptho.htm)

Pretty sweet, I may be ordering.

[The Sprouting Divot]

My dad's seats are in the middle of C, directly across from where that shot was taken, and he is immediately visible in the picture (with it in front of you, there's just a tad too much compression in the one posted above). His idea of orange is the brightest blaze orange shirt I have ever seen. He made up for the handful of people who didn't wear orange by wearing entirely too much of it. I think he has to put that shirt in a bag before putting it in the closet, or else the closet looks like the light was left on. Seriously. I think it may be radioactive. It's a marvel...

I'm somewhere near that "smeared" looking flash in the left-center of the picture, but unfortunately, my clothing wasn't bright enough to be identifiable in the crowd...

[IlliniNYC]

That's a great shot...I might have to pick one up. Does I-L get anything from linking to the site? Might as well help if I can!

[HouseofPaign]

The posters are all over here in town....the $10 ones. You can get them at Meijer, Schnucks,etc...etc....They also have pictures with 2 PTHO shots all together showing the progress of the promotion, different sizes etc.

The ones at LaPayne are pretty up there in price, but they are matted, framed, etc

[Dan]

Does I-L get anything from linking to the site?Just the satisfaction of helping out Illini fans and a great photographer :)

[Dan]

BromleyHall94 what does the text say at the bottom of the poster?

[HouseofPaign]

As co-creator of the PTHO promotion, I am pretty proud of it. So anyone ordering out of market, I appreciate it. Keep the word out. It's starting to get some national attention. Maybe in a year of 2 it might be in a video game, or mentioned by name on more national media. That would be pretty cool! The althletic department said they get calls about it all the time, so I hope we get credit for it here as an original. I know other colleges have done similar activites, but the Illini have taken it to a whole new level

[Dan]

As co-creator of the PTHO promotionReally. Maybe you could provide a little background. Like the story behind it, what ignited the idea, how you think it went the first night, etc...?

[HouseofPaign]

We got the idea from the Indiana / Kentucky game. I work for Mix 94.5, if you look down in the left hand corner, next to the score, in the .05 font. That's where we get our mention. If you look at older prints we had our logo on the picture.

anyway, the lower half of the evil Assembly Hall was primarily Red for Indiana obviously. Next Tuesday in our promotions meeting myself and the 3 others in attendance talked about doing a promotion covering the whole stadium in orange. Since it was unique to us and drak blue wouldn't stand out as much.

Mostly if was all up to the fans. We had no budget for 16k orange shirts, and have no access to the stadium, 2 other stations in the market have a contract to broadcast and do any promotions dieretly inside the Hall. So we got on the air about a month or so before the MSU game (they were ranked 4th at the time) so we figured the most exposure and notice would be on that game.

We plugged it about every other hour, up until a few weeks out, then every hour. Wear orange, paint the hall orange, etc..etc..We have tickets to give away for every game. So we got one sponsor to make 500 t-shirts that we gave away WITH the tickets, so the name of the promotion/our logo/and the color orange would AT LEAST have some presence. We gave away the rest at a breakfast pep-rally at a place called the city of new orleans (which is now closed). We had the coaches show up, band, cheerleaders, etc. By now the hype for the game was there and the tickets were a hot commodity (we were 6th at this point).

We were blown away at the response (after this year the old pic looks a little weak) but at that time it was pretty cool. And every year after that we added on to it, we trademarked and servicemarked the name (hence why you hear it on no other stations, or commercials, hey we had to keep ownership). Then we made rally towels one year, bandannas, more shirts, etc...etc....

In the past the cheerleaders shot a dressed up spartan with orange paintballs. We gave a "wake up" call at 6am to Zack Randolph and Jason Richardson. Just trying everything we coudl think of for eveyone to catch on. Now our station reaches a lot of people, BUT not every demographic at the Hall. So after a few years, a few more publications, etc. It definetly has caught on.

[IlliniNYC]

'Paign....that's awesome. Great work! I don't know if you made it to Vegas, but you would have been proud to see a high school gym on the west coast 90% filled with orange.

[Dan]

That's just outstanding.

The 1st PTHO game in 2001 against MSU was so much fun and impressive at the time, yet yes indeed it was nothing compared to the last few PTHOs.

[HouseofPaign]

Yeah, I still have that one framed and up at my place. I thought about replacing it with an updated one, but the first one has a lot of memories. I have one the 8x10s of the progression of the event and the poster in this thread in my basement. I dig how they changed the angle, and the scoreboard adds A LOT to the shot.

[BromleyHall94]

The right side talks about the history of the Hall (1963, 8.35 million), the left side has stats from the game. This shot is much sharper than the first PTHO poster I have.

[The Sprouting Divot]

Major props to you, HoP. Top shelf.

I like the idea of the wake up calls. How did you manage to pull that off, (if you're comfortable getting into all the details in relative public)? Just call and pester the front desk at The Chancellor until they relented?