NYC Prepares for MTV VMA's

Seats have been removed, stages built, and Radio City Music Hall is being prepared to rock like never before Thursday when the MTV Video Music Awards take over. "We've been talking about these things for months," said VMA executive producer Dave Sirulnick, surveying the transformed Radio City. "It's great to see these things come alive."Alive, in this case, means adding huge LCD video screens to the sides and balcony of the famed showplace. It means creating video projections that will bathe the hall in different colors and images for every segment of the show. And it means extending the stage into the orchestra seating area, allowing performers to get up close with the fans. "We want to show off the beauty and the grandeur of this place," Sirulnick said. "But we're putting a 21st-century twist on it."Indeed, while Ludacris rehearsed Monday, his lyrics were projected in 10-foot-high letters on the side walls, and a video of a woman dancing played on 13 massive video screens hanging behind him.

It takes 300 people and months of planning to put on the VMAs, the biggest event on MTV's annual schedule. The scheduled performers include Shakira, Ludacris, Panic! at the Disco and Beyoncé, and Sirulnick promised some surprises.

For the first time, MTV will provide a feed of the backstage doings, using mtvoverdrive.com.

"We're looking to make it fairly loose," Sirulnick said of the Overdrive feed. "We want to give it that backstage feel." The performers and presenters have been told that any public area in Radio City might be televised. The network is putting on a broadband program to run concurrently with the VMA’s which will give people at home a taste of what is happening beyond the reach of the TV station's cameras. Like other networks, MTV is attempting to give viewers more information via different platforms, and the backstage coverage is the latest twist in that effort. Sirulnick sees the Overdrive coverage as an addition to the standard VMA telecast. "We want to be as forward-thinking as possible," Sirulnick said.

Jack Black will host this year's MTV VMA's.