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South Hook Comes Alive with Christie HD Widescreen
A 12.6m widescreen Christie HD projection backdrop dominated the official opening ceremony of the South Hook LNG Terminal at Milford Haven in South Wales recently. The event was attended by Her Majesty the Queen, accompanied by HRH Prince Phillip, and HRH The Amir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani (who along with the Queen carried out the inauguration) accompanied by her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned and members of the Qatari Royal family.
The brief handed down by production company WRG to The Projection Partnership was to provide for both HD source material and live camera coverage. The Tectoniks dome structure contained a curved screen that was to provide the backdrop to timecode-locked video / digital audio playback of both live action and high definition footage produced by WRG. Christie M series projection and Vista Spyder processing were called on to help deliver the solution.
The video content contained HD animation that symbolised the link between Qatar and the UK in the production and supply of LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas). The content also contained footage shot at 720p and1080i, produced on location in Qatar.
WRG elected to use HD hard drive replay for the video content and a digital audio server, which were coupled with time code to provide sync playback. The projection was specified to HD level for maximum image fidelity and the internal camera system to SDI, as Projection Partnership had live links to the host broadcaster for national news inserts.
"Because the venue was a temporary structure and dome shaped, the challenge was to find projection equipment that was very light in weight as there were severe rigging limits," explained Projection Partnership owner Thomas Conlon, who was also the event's Vision Director. "We also had to ensure the microphones didn't pick up the fan noise of the projectors."
Factor into this the requirement for native HD resolution projectors that would be able to correctly line up a three-projector widescreen blend across the screen area - and the obvious choice was the Christie M series. "This unit's considerable output (9500 lumens) and virtually non-existent noise kept the sound department very happy, while its low weight factor (just 25kg) really helped to meet the rigging criteria," Thomas continued.
"In fact we really only had one choice of kit for this project. Knowing the reliability of Christie projectors I had no hesitation in ordering three HD+10K-M devices to handle this project. The M series has a dual lamp system and this gave our client a tremendous amount of confidence in the choice of projection units."
The built in Warp/Twist function helped Projection Partnership to line up the blend area, and because they were able to employ the Christie network remote control over a LAN network the engineers could get close up to the screen and produce a pixel-perfect line up.
Oliver Phipps was HoD on this event, specifying fibre optic links for the projection vision feeds and utilising CAT 5 for all the control of the projectors.
The Vista Spyder 344 was used to provide the three-projector background and provide the PIP windows for live action content. "This unit's superlative image processing meant that both HD 1080p and 720p MPEG source material could be displayed without compromise," Conlon stated. And because the Spyder can accept so many formats, the production company did not require a lot of external devices for conversion and reformatting. "This also kept all the lip-sync issues at bay and meant we could get the image on screen, on budget and on cue.
"In fact the Christie projection helped deliver an event which was faultless - which is the way our clients like it."
The event's technical director, WRG's Tim Williams, agreed. "The three Christie Digital HD10K-M Projectors that were used on the project provided excellent edge blending and HD synching capabilities resulting in a seamless 12.6m wide HD image to showcase the video content and provide a stunning backdrop to the live stage performance."
Williams was supported by executive producer, Alie Tiley, and show producer, Justine Catterall. Environment designer was Paul Bonomini, while Delta Sound and Richard Sinclair provided the audio infrastructure, Stage One the set and stage, Essential Lighting the lighting, Tectoniks the venue structure and Vertigo the rigging. Finally, the broadcast links supplier was Feltech Electronics.
7th September 2009
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