In a collaborative trans-Tasman effort, Over The Front brought artefacts and visuals from these campaigns to visitors.
Bruce Brown, project manager with Mental Media in Sydney, oversaw the AV installation which included consulting on the hardware design, specification, and documentation in collaboration with Alex Smythe, AV manager at the Memorial.
The technical infrastructure drew heavily on cinema loudspeakers from Martin Audio.
The exhibit itself featured five aircraft - three Allied types and two rare German fighter planes - along with other artefacts including the left boot of The Red Baron (Baron von Richthofen). Aside from the AV, the aircraft and collection objects were displayed in an exhibition designed by Freeman Ryan Design, and including a 21m x 3.5m curved projection screen.
Situated in the Anzac Hall, the virtual blank canvas did represent a number of challenges including non-intrusion or disruption to the rest of the exhibitions in the hall, noted Bruce Brown. "This was achieved by careful choice and placement of the components and by expert system tuning undertaken by Anthony Russo from Technical Audio Group (TAG)."
Russo worked with local dealer Darren Russell from Elite Sound and Lighting and Glen Harrison from HME Engineering, who was responsible for all the tricky steel fabrication to produce a turnkey solution and overcome the vast areas of hard reflective surfaces.
Suspended behind the curved screen in L/C/R configuration were three Martin Audio Screen 5 THX-approved cinema active three-way systems, with dual 15-inch low frequency drivers, a large-format mid/high horn containing six-inch horn-loaded midrange, and a one-inch compression driver.
The surround speakers, consisting of two Martin Audio Screen Sub 1A high-powered 18-inch sub-bass units, to THX spec, were suspended far left and right of the space with an overhead dead centre effect speaker.
The sound was produced in 7.1 Dolby Digital Cinema surround sound and once the seven channels left the decoder they were duly processed in the system's DSP.
(Jim Evans)
