The Hire and Live Events department was recently responsible for the creative design and technical management of seven major events over three weeks. One of these included a 1920s themed event for a 60th birthday celebration. "Centred around the art deco period, this was a great event to work on," commented technical director Mike Naish. "Our team was involved from the very start of the planning stages. We designed the invitations, set, lighting
Bill Dudley - with whom XL Video has also worked on Hitchcock Blonde and The Coast of Utopia - decided to use video as a scenic and narrative vehicle to denote times, locations, ideas and thoughts. Video provides a simple, practical and highly effective solution to deliver a number of m
Projected Image Digital's David March comments: "We're excited to be working with D-Tek Industries and products that are at the forefront of visual production and creativity. The industry is currently moving very fast, and these are the first of a whole series of related products."
The D-Switch, a DMX-controlled 4:1 video switch unit, is the first in a series of new products from D-Tek, developed to give lighting designers the power and flexibility to control the video elements of their show. The D-Sw
The event was conceived by Bob Geldof, a co-founder of Ten Alps Events, and was designed to introduce some magic and a sense of visual anticipation to the capital throughout December. 'Brightening Up London' was a project that Geldof had been keen to produce since 1999 and finally found the perfect sponsor in Orange, who grasped the potential synergy that this style of media campaign could bring to its own brand.
Ten Alps Events had been in touch with the owners of over 30 buildings over the past two years and when the project received the green light the first challenge was to create the shortlist of buildings that would be included. Those chosen included Tate Bri
The company's 'Visionetwork' is a new range of command and control technologies already in use in IT, utility and process control applications. The first product to be introduced is VN-2400, a network display processor that combines RGB, video and network application sources onto a videowall at low cost. Also being demonstrated will be VN-Commander, an easy-to-use graphical user interface; and the newly launched VN-Glimpse hardware agent, which is an RGB streaming encoder via ethernet.
Electrosonic Director advances the state of play of AV/IT integration by integrating audio, RGB, video, touch-panel cont
The screen was originally specified at 13 by 13 panels in size, but has since been expanded to 16 by 13 panels, for a 16:9 wide screen aspect ratio. The combination of the 51.9sq.m (559sq.ft) screen size and the 6mm pixel pitch gives a screen resolution totalling 1536 pixels (H) by 936 pixels (V). Control is via four Lighthouse LIP-KX processors, running a DVI input fed by an Electrosonic Vec
As a backdrop to this visual extravaganza, Massteknik UK staged a 45sq.m Unitek V9 LED screen system - one of the largest screens ever used in the Royal Albert Hall. Behind the scenes, an Electrosonic Vector image processor was in control, driving the mixture of live video, graphics and Catalyst images, which were created by Massteknik's Swedish division. The show was produced by Robert Wells AB of Sweden, and the technical production was jointly achieved by Massteknik's UK and Swedish operations.
(Lee Baldock)
At the National, DHA's Wyatt Enever and Steve Larkins carried out the careful pre-distortion of the images projected onto the show's cyclorama. The projection - particularly the scrolling image of New York as the ship on which the show is set leaves dock - proved so successful that it was expanded for the West End production.
However, the changes required the DHA team to produce newly pre-distorted images to suit the different shape of cyclorama and projector positions at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - one of London's largest stages, but here filled with John Gunter's recreation of an Atlantic liner. Gunte
Although the Queen was protected from the strong winds and downpours by a temporary structure, hundreds of Southampton residents, barred from the dockside by tight security around the Ship, braved the elements to watch the ceremony on large screens in the nearby park. Weather conditions were fierce and health and safety regulations prevented the rigging of the stage and other equipment until the eleventh hour when the winds finally calmed. Despite the weather, the afternoon was a colourful, lively spectacle thanks to an array of imaginat
As in their acclaimed show The Elephant Vanishes, the Complicité team have opted to incorporate video projection into the new show, working with Canadian video designer Francis Laporte, perhaps best known for his work with Cirque du Soleil on their show
MTA and Clear Channel had originally experimented with plasma screens for the sites, which are at eye-level on top of the railings surrounding the steps leading down to platform level. But the wide variations in ambi
The company has recently moved from Aldershot to its new premises in Yateley, which will give them the facility of a dedicated room for training and demonstration of the full range of Mission Pro products, say Mission Pro.
David Raymen for True Colours commented: "We were very impressed by Mission Pro's products which offer a superb range of solutions for the AV market, with high intelligibility and even coverage in both good and difficult acoustic environments. They have invested heavily in design and tooling so the installation products are easy to fit and merge visually better th
Two 3m x 2m Barco D10 displays (in 4:3 aspect ratio) are configured either side of a central, letterbox-style 6m x 2m screen, set behind the vast drum kit. Three Minicams are positioned on stage - two picking up the drum kit and the third focused on the revolving keyboard. All other stage activity is captured from the front-of-house camera, fitted with a 33:1 lens. However, the video sou
As at the IAA motor show in Frankfurt where the Mercedes-Benz booth featured an 1800sqm (12 x 150m) circular facade composed of 47,000 MiPIX intelligent LED pixel blocks from Barco, the Detroit presentation was supported by media equipment from XL Video employing the same SMD LED technology. At the NAIAS, the 'media façade' theme was carried a stage further. The architecture for the booth was the work of KTP, whilst Atelier Markgraph handled the planning and communication. Integrated into the ring facade - used for the playback of intelligent lighting effects - two convex vid
Upstairs, Metropolis replaced all the old TVs with Panasonic TX28 and TX32 widescreen televisions, installing a total of 33, plus one of the new Generation 6 Panasonic TH42 PW6 plasma screens - one of the first in the UK. Two new Sanyo PLC SL15 video projectors were also installed - again some of the first in the country - fitted with protective POAP sm
Enever was brought by the show's lighting designer Paule Constable and the National's lighting staff to help realize the large-format projections required as part of the set design. The aim was to use abstract images created by the show's set designer, Giles Cadle, and video projection designer, Thomas Gray of The Gray Circle, to dress the curved black BP screen used as a cyclorama. The difficulty was that, unlike previous shows that Enever has been involved wi
With four big screens, dozens of plasma screens and six satellite feeds, patrons are never far from live sports action. The internal fit-out, by Sydney club specialists Swerve Design, features numerous old and modern classics including a Ferrari racing car, a suit worn by Michael Schumacher and a bat used by Don Bradman.
Sydney-based audio-visual installer Saltec was contracted for the fit-out, which includes Allen & Heath mixing and control, Martin Audio Wavefront 8 system (with over 50 speakers), powered by QSC amplification. In 'The Arena', an area
The Reading office will close at the end of March and all matters relating to overseas sales will now be referred to the head office in Edinburgh. Derek Gilbert will continue to work with the company as a consultant. The Audio Visual arm of Northern Light, based at Reading and known as Immedia, will close and all AV contracts and sales will be handled through Immed
The Versa TILEs lit up eight sections of stage along the perimeter of the stage riser. Half of them were eight panels wide, at 40 pixels wide and five pixels high, and the other half consisted of 11 panels, at 55 pixels wide and five pixels high. Choi used Adobe After Effects software to create custom content, which he matched pixel by p
Previews of the film were projected onto a series of floating Holo Screens - supplied by Danish company dnp through its UK distributor Paradigm Audio Visual - providing transparent suspended visualization, perfect for the theming of the windows. The whole idea had been the brainchild of WOW Factors' Mark Jones, who had demonstrated the Holo Screen technology to Al Fayed 12 months earlier.
High End Systems' Mike Hanson worked with the duo at Ronnie Dunn's high-tech barn, where they played with Catalyst and digital images prior to production rehearsals. Joining in were video director Chris Keating (U2, Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue) and B&D veteran video engineer Mike Bischof, both of whom are on the tour.
Hanson demonstrated the new features of Catalyst v3 software, such as the abi
displayLED is independent of any screen manufacturer and will be able to offer purchasers a choice of many different manufacturers and models, advising impartially on the best model for a particular application, the most appropriate previously-owned screen for price-sensitive ventures, and bring the right people together for rental projects.
"The combined experience within
The large display installed by Eurovideo in the studio is a Lighthouse 10mm (pixel pitch) LED screen with additional image processing provided by Vector. The Lighthouse screen is made up of 64 10mm LED panels arranged in an 8 x 8 format, and requires four Vector outputs. The sources used are two SDI (digital video) feeds.
The advantage of using Vector in this application is that it can provide multiple outputs and multiple inputs. The video sources are applied to the Vector, which then provides multiple outputs to the Lighthouse LIP that prepares the image for the LED panels.
(Lee Baldock)
