It was only a few years ago when managing director Neil Trenell was working single-handedly on projects and events using Hippotizer. These days his company employs 10 staff and owns more than 30 Hippotizer units, which have been used to run an average of 120 shows and events each year.
In the last couple of years FIX8Group has hired a few talented and experienced designers and programmers. Two years ago Nick Charalampidis, formerly of Green Hippo, joined FIX8Group as technical manager. And more recently, since early 2014 John Montague is bringing extensive experience and a long history in video design, programming and visual production to the company.
For a corporate event in Tenerife, FIX8Group created a huge immersive 360-degree projection screen which allowed 1400 delegates to sit inside surrounded by the screen with a central stage in the round for speakers giving their presentations for an annual EMEA pharmaceutical-sales conference.
Creating a 19584x1080 pixel canvas with 770sq.m of screen surface they used 12x 20k projectors to supply the 25m pixel canvas with content - and this was only the Plenary. Additionally there were 165 breakout rooms across six hotels requiring 220 flip charts, 68x plasma screens, 140 desktop projectors and screens plus 3x gala dinners and a charity run that was all accomplished with 56x crew members.
For a high-end blue chip company in Paris, FIX8GROUP acted as full technical production to oversee the design and operate all lighting and video elements of the two day event at the L'Hotel Du Collection Neur.
FIX8Group created another 360-degree projection surface inside the hotel function suite. The 360 degree projection surface surrounding the 350 delegates contained14K HD blended images fed from 12 Hippotizer HDs.
In Barcelona, Working on behalf of a leading petrochemical company for their bi-annual conference FIX8Group created a rectangular 360degree exhibition and mapped a 3D presentation to the contours of the theatre for a two-day plenary. The set-up required 32 Hippotizers, 5 D3's, two Spyders, four GrandMA Lites and a few zookeepers. Additionally four Uberpan controllers were employed to handle the 115m pixels and 150 moving lights at the Centre Convencions Internacional in Barcelona. The 80-strong crew worked seamlessly during the 48 hour load in across the two venues, with a total of 5 trucks, 56 projectors and a grand total of 78M pixels.
At the XXII Olympic Winter Games organised by the Sochi Organizing Committee (SOC), FIX8Group acted as the head of video co-ordination and media server programmer, operating the show at the Medals Plaza for the Victory Ceremony which was broadcast live.
The European leg of the Nine Inch Nail Tour had FIX8Group deploying 47 universes of pixelmapped video, whilst additionally creating interactive content using Kinect Cameras. This was the first production in the world to also use magic panels.
Last weekend saw FIX8Group out and about at V-Festival.
(Jim Evans)
