The 75-minute long movie was accompanied by a specially written score by musician, producer and composer Nitin Sawhney. He also conducted the London Symphony Orchestra who performed it live.
The event was a special screening organised by Film London in conjunction with the BFI, the Mayor's Office, the Barbican UK Film Council and Cambridge Film Festival. "The occasion was absolutely made for the HD18Ks," said QED director, Paul Wigfield. "These powerful 3-chip DLP 17,500 ANSI lumen projectors offer high output and crisp images from 10-bit processing in native HD resolution."
Festival Director Tony Jones was determined that the quality of the projection onto the 50ft x 25ft giant inflatable screen should be as good as possible. So the film was specially digitally re-mastered by the BFI National Archive onto HD-CAM and the task of projecting it was placed in the reliable hands of QED Productions - early adopters of HD technology.
QED has worked in the unforgiving environment of Trafalgar Square many times, and although the show commenced in dusk conditions at 9pm they were enveloped in light from the surrounding buildings. For this particular projection, two HD18K projectors were double-stacked and fed from two synchronised Sony J-H3 HD-CAM players.
The reasons that the film looked so impressive was due to the combination of extremely high brightness and high contrast ratio (variable 1600-2000:1), said the QED director. "They produce massive brightness - a point noted by the representatives from the Mayor's office and the BFI. The punch of the HD18Ks was vital in view of the high level of ambient light."
Explaining QED's investment in Christie, he continued: "The reason we chose Christie as our partner - apart from the fact that they are the most advanced manufacturers of HD projectors in the marketplace - was the completeness of the range, with six native HD projectors in the family all using the same lens system. This was the perfect environment for the HD18Ks to receive their first really high profile public outing."
(Jim Evans)
