Designed for Ford by London-based design house Imagination, the stands incorporate some of the latest LED screen technology provided by CT London, lighting supplied by Static Lighting (conventionals) and PRG Europe (moving lights - crew-chiefed by last month's Letters competition winner, Matt Bull!), and audio from Dimension Audio, CT's Avesco stablemate.
Imagination's developing concept for the Ford stand involved a 'clean' ceiling, making its first appearance in Europe, which concealed the busy contents of the roof, including the light sources themselves, and focussed attention on the exhibits. Tanya Burns, of Imagination's lighting design team (see L&SI July-August 2006), told us: "The ceiling first appeared in Detroit last year . . . for the first time, the source of glare is greatly reduced. It mixes architectural theology with theatrical effect, and the main tool in that is to hide the light sources. Imagination devised the truss system to provide flexible hanging positions within the slots, depending on the angle that we need to achieve. The truss is actually not as restrictive as it may appear - the bars on the truss are flexible, on a pin system, offering any number of positions."
Fixtures on the Ford stand include various sources - PowerPars (575W MSR), plus Vari*Lite VL2000 washes and spots, these latter for the show elements such as the actual reveal. For the blue walls, Arri 575s are used, with additions: "We're using a special lens," explains Burns, "because we have curved walls and a fixed, rigid slot system, it required a lot of forethought to achieve the blue wall," (avoiding the LED screens for example). "We don't use profile-type fittings because they would leave too many shadow lines. We have to use a diffuse source, but also be able to control it. We put snoots on the front of the lights, in various sizes, again depending on the angle, and also colour correction depending on the graphics - [Rosco] 3407 [CTO], and variants of that."
But the car's the star: "It's almost like spotlighting performers - we aim to create spotlights for the car within a lit environment," says Burns.
CT has enjoyed a 20-year working relationship with Imagination, and the international motor show circuit represents a major part of it. CT's managing director Charlie Whittock says: "What's changed for us in the past couple of years is that we've moved to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as Europe and America. Budgets in America are significantly bigger than here, and we've supported [Imagination] ever since they first went over to do Detroit."
For the Ford stand, CT provided 257 tiles of Barco i8 in custom frames. Source material comes via two sync'd channels of Dataton Watchout. Land Rover's panoramic screen arrangement required 135 tiles of Barco i6, while Mazda had two displays (pictured above), totalling 308 tiles of Barco i6. Each of the stands also featured a standard camera package, including Grass Valley Kayak desks and Dataton Watchout playback.
Jaguar was launching its new 2006 XKR sports car on a brand new stand, and here CT provided a screen with a difference. With Imagination looking for a curved screen, CT looked at the new 96mm x 960mm panels of 6mm pixel pitch Chromatek LED screen from Japanese manufacturer Hibino. The slimline panels allow for a tighter, smoother curve than was otherwise available, with processing from Hibino's standard, proven system. This is the first high-profile use of these screen modules in Europe, following its European debut at the Integrated Systems Expo in Brussels a
