The four projectors were instrumental in creating a sense of realism for this claustrophobic suspense thriller, starring Dougray Scott and Kara Tointon, and co-written by Omid Nooshin and Andrew Love (with Nooshin directing).
The action takes place aboard a Charing Cross to Hastings commuter train, and follows the 90-minute journey - with horrifying consequences.
It was to create a fast moving backdrop that Zack Winfield, who is producing the film with Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto, decided to use projection - rather than resorting to the more sterile and conventional 'green screen' alternative - and approached QED, Christie's rental staging partner.
"We wanted to create an environment where we were giving the passengers something to react to - in effect going back to methods used 20 years ago, but with today's technologies, making everything you see through the train windows believable for 90 minutes," said Winfield. "Green screen just doesn't give that sense of realism, partly because it doesn't provide reflections in the window and the fact that the fake environment doesn't convince the actors. Also, the idea of cutting out 20 windows and replacing them with CG moving images would have been cost prohibitive. With projection we knew we could make it much more convincing."
However, the production crew were getting fairly desperate when it came to implementation, until the film's director of photography Angus Hudson notified them that the PLASA technology show was about to take place at Earls Court. "He knew of Christie and said 'these guys do the business'. So we raced up there, met Christie and also UVA (processor company) - and they both put us in touch with QED," added Winfield.
The result was that four mobile rear projection rigs, with 16ft x 9ft screens (16:9 aspect ratio), were custom built on Shepperton's H Stage - fed by 150m fibre runs, supplied by QED, so the towers could be moved freely without running out of cable.
First of all, the projectors had to satisfy tests for frequency and frame rate compatibility with the server, colour temperature, contrast ratio and light balancing, which was vital since much of the film was shot after dark. Christie ticked every box.
The content that would flash past at 100 miles an hour - starting with Hungerford Bridge and the London Eye on the Thames, and including urban and rural scenescapes, railway stations and generic footage - had already been shot and this was fed into the UVA D3 server, whose four synchronised HD outputs fed the four projectors, which were each fitted with a 1.1:1 lens.
QED director, Paul Wigfield, said that his company had been attracted to the project after seeing the trailer online. "Zack Winfield knew he needed a minimum of 8K HD projection and we had no hesitation in recommending our Christie projectors," he commented. "The major criteria were brightness, contrast and resolution. With film work, xenon lamps will produce the brightness and the projectors the contrast."
(Jim Evans)
