Christie technology scores with Golden Knights
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Bringing a professional sports team to Las Vegas – a city known for showmanship and world-class entertainment is no small feat, and the Vegas Golden Knights have embraced the challenge of playing their home games in the Entertainment Capital of the World. One of the top priorities of the team is to create a truly memorable fan experience. The first-year National Hockey League (NHL) club uses 12 Christie WU20K-J projectors, Christie Mystique Install, Christie Pandoras Box and Christie Widget Designer to create the on-ice show.
Leading up to the team’s inaugural home game on 10 October 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights and Image Engineering had been collaborating and planning for months on the pre-game and in-game entertainment. However, when the horrific mass shooting occurred in Las Vegas on 1 October, the team wanted to respond to the tragedy and do its part to help the community grieve, heal and persevere. This necessitated building an entirely new show.
“We wanted to honour the victims, the survivors and the first responders - months of planning turned into a few days of planning. We were listening to the community and seeing what made the most sense,” says Jonny Greco, vice president events and entertainment, Vegas Golden Knights. The NHL franchise honoured the first responders, victims and survivors by projection mapping the names of the 58 victims on the ice followed by 58 seconds of silence.
“It was celebrating this city and acknowledging what had happened and giving Las Vegas the opportunity to honour and grieve together, and then transition into a few hours of time when hopefully they could have some fun and be in a more positive place,” says Greco.
Image Engineering was brought onboard by the Golden Knights to handle the full game presentation, including AV integration. “We took a lot of care to figure out an installation plan that was going to work for T-Mobile Arena because they do have so many large concerts and one-off shows that come in and out so frequently,” explains Ian Bottiglieri, director of project management, Image Engineering.
The 12 projectors are in ‘pods’ of two near each face-off circle, each blue line, and centre ice, on each side of the arena. Image Engineering then used Christie Mystique to align the projectors, saving both them and the Golden Knights what would normally be between eight to 10 hours every time the projectors needed realignment after being repositioned for a concert or other event.
The Pandoras Box Quad Player is integrated with the time code triggers from the Daktronics system, triggering the content in a synchronized fashion, and, according to Bottiglieri, the Golden Knights’ technical team are rapidly learning what Pandoras Box is capable of and continue to push the envelope with some “cool, creative stuff”.
(Jim Evans)
