Trust delivers screen impact

n times of economic hardship, the staging of large events are often scaled down, or cancelled, and charitable donations are hard to come by. But this didn’t stop events agency Smyle from organising the annual Sunseeker Charitable Trust Ball.

Boat manufacturer Sunseeker International held a gala dinner last month, Celebrating The Music of the Bee Gees, in aid of The Outward Bound Trust – an educational charity that helps young people develop through outdoor courses and activities.

The ball was co-hosted by the Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb and Sunseeker International’s managing director Robert Braithwaite, with radio presenter David ‘Kid’ Jensen as DJ.

The event raised in excess of £150,000 for the Outward Bound Trust from the main auction, silent auction and raffle of luxury items donated by companies, celebrities, hotels and football clubs. The money will enable 10,000 young people to attend an Outward Bound Trust course this year.

Widescreen

Smyle used QED Productions for the a-v element of the event. QED supplied the hardware and graphical content for the show, and it also provided technical support in the main room by supplying extra HD cameras, fibre links, switching and feeds to the main LED screen.

The event was held at the Battersea Evolution venue in London, a permanent structure, although it feels like a temporary one, with white canvas walls and ceilings around the site.

Client feedback from last year’s event revealed there was no lasting impression made when guests entered or left the venue. So, this year, the Outward Bound Trust wanted to ensure branding at those points.

‘The idea was to provide an impressive display to ensure guests were immediately reminded of the purpose of the event when they arrived,’ says Paul Wigfield, director of QED.

However, the canvas walls made image projection difficult. QED and Smyle wanted to use a space, measuring 3x30m, in the reception area, just above the two main entrances to the bar to get Outward Bound’s message across.

Although QED is regularly involved in large projections, this project required an unusually large amount of planning.

‘Having measured the space, it was clear the most efficient and cost-effective way to do the job was to use six edge-blended HD projectors. The native 16:9 aspect ratio and the high-pixel count of the projectors meant that the target area could be covered with only six machines. It would have required nine 4:3 projectors to cover the same area, however, the vertical resolution would not have been as good, and with so many system outputs required, it would not have been possible to create such a display from a single, live source and still achieve the requisite system performance. The on-screen resolution of this live canvas was slightly more than 11 million pixels in a 10,240×1080 pixel array,’ says Wigfield.

Single-source solution

There were two unusual aspects to this installation. First, the size (which measured 27×2.8m in the final analysis), and the second was the images were driven, not by a bank of networked computers, but from a single source.

Wigfield explains why it choose to use a single source for this installation ‘To achieve such a high-resolution display has always required a series of networked computers, combined with pre-rendered content created using bespoke software. Achieving sufficiently high performance has primarily been the reason for such custom solutions.

‘However, using NVDIA multi-head 3D graphics cards, with 1.5Gb of on-board video RAM installed in QED’s Apple Mac Pro systems, we were able to achieve the required resolution and performance level using just one main and one back-up machine,’ he said. All signals were delivered via dual-link DVI into Spyder.

‘Using a single source to generate and playback the content enables conventional presentation software such as Apple’s Keynote and PowerPoint to be used. This makes content easy to create, review and amend, saves time and money on hardware and makes the system cheaper and easier to back up. The live nature of the high-resolution canvas means that content can be delivered to screen instantly, without having to wait around for images to be rendered,’ adds Wigfield.

The complete system comprised of two multi-head Apple Pro machines, two Vista Spyder 344 processors, six channels of DVI fibre-optic distribution and six edge-blended Christie HD8K three-chip DLP HD projectors. From input to final output, the system was digital, ensuring high-bandwidth signal processing and delivery of true 10-bit uncompressed RGB colour. The twin-linked Spyder 344 systems can support up to eight multi-head DVI inputs, plus multiple HDSDI inputs and multiple universal analogue inputs via 15pin D-sub connections.

Although QED has carried out many large-screen projections, it hasn’t come across one which was such an unusual shape. This posed several problems in terms of what images could be used.

Wigfield explains: ‘Although the 9.5:1 aspect ratio was unusual, creating the content was technically the same for any ultra-widescreen display because Keynote was chosen as the software platform. However, the trickiest thing was selecting and creating appropriate images to suit the display, although technically putting all the content together was straightforward.’

The design chosen closely replicated Outward Bound Trust’s web banner, as the shapes were so similar.

The white canvas walls also caused a few projection issues. ‘Blending multiple projectors over a wide area usually involves a reasonable amount of geometric correction, however, the projection surface at Battersea was not a screen, but a large expanse of white cloth stretched over the fabric of the building. From a distance, the surface looked reasonably flat, but when projected on, the surface was severely undulating. It was clear that only extreme geometric correction would be able to line up the images.

‘The level of geometric correction required was so extreme that Christie Twist Po were used – every projector had to be digitally hand-stitched together to create the perfect ultra-widescreen canvas. The Twist Pro is a killer feature of the Christie HD projectors and without it, the job would simply not have been achievable,’ says Wigfield.

All projector line-ups were done wirelessly via a local QED projector network operated by a wireless touchscreen tablet.

Scaling back budgets

Did the downturn affect the staging of the event? ‘Yes, it did. The climate is affecting all events in one way or another. It’s no secret that some charity events are struggling in the current financial climate,’ says Dominic Thomas-Smith, senior events producer, Smyle.

The budget for the annual ball was scaled down this year, although ‘we were blessed with a pragmatic client, coupled with a supportive board and sponsor, all of whom were determined to make the event a success,’ says Thomas-Smith.

Even it budgets are trimmed, you still have to meet client expectations. ‘The client was supportive and worked with us to make all elements work. The last thing Smyle, Outward Bound and Sunseeker wanted was to lose the most creative aspect of the event,’ says Thomas-Smith.

He adds: ‘The budget may have been slightly smaller than in previous years, but we made it work as hard as we could.’

KITLIST

– 2 x Vista Spyder 344 video processors
– 6 x Christie HD8K HD projectors flown with 6 QED Christie flying
brackets
– 6 x channels of DVI-fibre optic distribution
– 2 x Apple Mac Pro
– 4 x Kramer VS81DVI-R DVI switchers.