Visible Partnership Advert Shoot
I'm currently working on a new project with Visible Partnership involving some innovative graphics.
We're providing our top Catalyst system along with all relevant bits and most importantly support to help realise the creative designs.
Watch this space...
James
Standard Life “LifeLens” Launch, London
Standard Life are in the process of launching their new employee financial planning service and today was the media preview event.
The event was held in London's Hospital Club and was produced by Jack Morton Worldwide.
XL Video were asked to supply LCD and plasma displays, each showing different content, to be integrated into a white fabric covered set panel. This wall matched the other walls in the gallery and looked like a permanent feature.
Catalyst was chosen as the source for these displays for its ability to send multiple files to multiple destinations, while easily scaling the content to match the wall apertures.
Behind the stage, a 103" Panasonic plasma display was integrated into another white covered set panel.
'Buzz' words were projected onto the other walls from pillars made to look part of the building structure.
James programmed the 2x Catalyst systems to accept wireless commands from his iPhone, meaning that the display wall could be pushed back against the wall. Adjustments were made to the scaling for each window using wireless remote desktop.
Samsung Galaxy S2 Launch, Barcelona
Samsung today launched two new products, the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the Olympic park in Barcelona.
The event marks the start of the Mobile World Congress in the city and as such the media guests expect to be impressed. Jack Morton Worldwide certainly delivered on these expectations again.
Following on from last year's success with 360 degree projection, it was decided to use projection again but on to varied surfaces in both texture and depth.
The main screen was 17.5m wide and 6.25m high, rear projected using 4x Barco HD20s in a 2x way edge blend. Flanking this were two front projected 'media façades' which had blocks at differing depths. 2x Barco R22 machines on their sides were mounted on a tower at front of house to project onto these.
For the opening sequence a voile curtain was brought across the entire stage, backed by a black Kabuki drop. This was also projected from the front, using Barco HD20s.
As the guests walked in, the Samsung Unpacked logo looped on the voile, followed by two teaser videos. After a countdown intro the Kabuki drops and the cloudy sky parts slowly as the voile curtain opens with carefully matched speed. Tied in with this, the main screen reveals an image with the product name.
The main show was divided into 4x stories, each with an opening video and product presentation graphics matched to the presenter's words. These were cued from script and designed to flow seamlessly.
Driving all the projectors were 3x XL Video Catalyst machines and Basic Monkey's 'Gorilla' Catalyst system output the 8 channels of audio used for the orchestral opening sequence along with the stereo audio for the rest of the show.
All the media servers were fed into a DVI matrix and were all inter-changeable in the event of one failing.
The show was triggered by our Jands Vista S3 console, making use of the carefully adjustable timing and transitions.
James programmed the show using content provided by Sangwha and Remedia, working closely with them to ensure a faithful representation of their concepts.
A show for invited guests is tomorrow following the same format as today but with a few alterations.
We're all wondering what next year's show will entail...
Unilever Conference @ ExCeL
Unilever wanted to make a big impact with this event so CSP designed an 18m x 4.8m widescreen set and asked Basic Monkey to design and supply the video system to make best use of it.
Tim from XL Video managed the event on our behalf and implemented the system of 3x cameras, 4x channel HD-PPU, 3x Digital Projection machines and distribution.
We provided our 'Gorilla' Catalyst system which played video content, processed the camera feed and outputted the 3x way edge blended projection, all in one system.
Autosport Live @ The NEC
This week saw James at the NEC in Birmingham for the annual Autosport Live show.
In the Fifth Gear Live Action Arena XL Video provided 2x large Lighthouse R7 screens and 9x pillars of PixLed F-30.
These were all driven by Basic Monkey's own 'Gorilla' Catalyst system and Jands Vista S3 running the newly developed software, 'Byron'.
The remit was for a high energy video show to match the intensity of the races and the lighting, along with video relay onto the Lighthouse screens from the camera crew.
Using the Vista S3 playback wing to run the show was invaluable, even if only for the flash buttons. Cutting between live video and graphics was made easier and more fluid by having every available clip relevant to that race on one page.
For the Fifth Gear section of the show, video clips featuring Vicki Butler Henderson introduced each segment.
Lighting for the event was designed by Nathan Wan and much effort was made to tie in the video content colours and pace to that of the lighting state for each race.
Clothes Show Live, NEC Birmingham
Tonight marks the end of a very busy week for James with XL Video at the Clothes Show Live event in Hall 9 at the NEC.
The show this year was based around "A Night at the Movies" theme, with each act of the show as a different genre of film. Opening with a Mission Impossible sequence which rolls into James Bond, the show goes through High School Musical, Western, Sci-Fi, Fairytale Romance, Scary, Rocky Gangsters and finishes with a feelgood finale.
Guest live music acts joined the show each day to entertain the crowd before the main show, these included Lucie Jones, Sunday Girl and Inju5tice.
Tim Riley at XL Video supplied 3x Lighthouse R7 screens for the stage, two of which were on revolves, along with Barco projected side screens fed using a 4x camera HD Panasonic PPU. The LED was fed using Basic Monkey's new 'Gorilla' Catalyst system and additional side screen and centre screen content came from XL's own Catalyst system.
Lighting designer Nigel Catmur and content designer Colin Rozee built visually pleasing and tightly timed intro sequences for each act, with lighting closely tied to video using a RoadHog console to trigger the Catalyst machines.
For a change the bulk of James' work was as a shoulder mount cameraman, along with responsibility for the Catalyst machines and LED.
On cameras were James Cooksey, Alex Roberts, Arran Busk, all engineered by Jake Robertson and directed by Kevin Watts.
After 37 shows in 6 days, it's time for bed now! Please check out the photos below, all of which are grabs from the video.
Thomson Reuters Eikon, Tokyo
Tonight was the last in the 'LED arches' series of launch events for Thomson Reuters' Eikon product at the Tokyo International Forum.
After the success of the London and New York launch events, James was asked to attend the Tokyo launch to ensure that it shared the same result.
Using the same show programmed for New York on Jands' Vista lighting software, it was a case of simply adding video files in Japanese to the locally supplied Catalyst machines and repeating the flow of the previous shows. James brought a Vista M1 playback wing with him on the plane to make running the show easier.
This trip ends a hectic year working with XL Video and Jack Morton Worldwide for James in anticipation for more next year.
Wella ITVA 2010, Paris
Tonight was the 2010 Wella International Trend Vision Awards show at Halle Freyssinet, Paris which saw competitors and guests from all over the world show off and discuss the big new hairstyles and colours for the next 12 months. The event was produced by Jack Morton Worldwide who brought together a huge number of suppliers to create a very successful show.
The event was built in three 'acts', the first being a demonstration of Wella's big new trends of 2011, 'Passionista', 'Lumina', 'Glamazon' and 'Polaris'. The afternoon act consisted of two competitions, 'Young Talent' and 'Colour', both of which are very prestigious awards to receive and can lead to great things for the winners.
In the evening, the guests and competitors were treated to dinner and entertainment from Diversity, The Noisettes and Soul Symphony.
The day show catwalk area consisted of 4x HD side screens and one 16m x 7m edge blended main screen. The main screen at the back of the catwalk had a revolving box at it's lower centre to allow four different apertures for the models to emerge from, each matching the style of the trend. In the afternoon, this box was opened up to allow a DJ to perform for the competitions.
XL Video were brought in to realise the video requirements on site, including fixed, jib and mobile cameras, LED screen, projection and control systems.
The trend content was designed and created by Knifedge with additional stings and animated name straps created by Jamie at JSCGI, all managed by Adam from JMW London and Justine Catterall.
James was tasked to turn the mass of video files, images and audio tracks into a programmed live show using Catalyst. Part of this process was done at XL Video's office in Hemel Hempstead to save time on site, however due to the delivery schedule of the video content lots more had to be done in Paris meaning some long days and late nights. Being involved from an early stage in meetings at Jack Morton's office in London and a wealth of emails and conference calls meant that James could ensure content was delivered in a way to work smoothly in Catalyst and make best use of the projection media.
Basic Monkey supplied a Jands Vista S3 system to control the 4x XL Catalyst systems and also our own new 12 core Catalyst system for surround audio playback and video processing. The system involved signal routing which allowed country and studio names to be keyed onto the live webcast at the same time as flags were displayed on the main screen. Live camera feeds were fed into Catalyst to be output to the side screens when not used as part of the trend video intros.
The show involved heavy use of alpha channel transparency to allow builds rather than fades, this involved some creative programming which was made readily achievable thanks to the the Jands Vista software.
Next years show is in New York and despite being pretty tired after the week, James is hoping to be involved again next year.
Many thanks to Nina Dunn from Knifedge who took the photos during the show (I was busy pressing the button in video city!).
Thomson Reuters Eikon “Go Live”, New York
Today was the "Go Live" launch of Thompson Reuters' Eikon Product in The Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal, New York.
After a year of planning and preparation the event went with true style and noticeably impressed the clients and potential clients present.
The core feature of the event was the innovative video concept by Jack Morton Worldwide, implemented by XL Video. 4x Barco MiTrix arches covered the audience space, leading up to a stage backed with a Hibino 4mm Chromatek LED screen, one of the most advanced and impressive on the market.
The whole system was fed using a Catalyst system sourced in the USA, programmed by James of Basic Monkey. Catalyst was used to play the arrival video loop, opening sequence, video excerpts and then some abstract graphics to amuse the guests after the show. For the main presentation, Keynote was used, this being fed into the Catalyst system.
At all times it was important to keep video sources native to the screens' resolutions, this was achieved with lots of maths, careful signal paths and video transcoding.
Using Final Cut Studio, James 're-crunched' the source video excerpts to match the native resolution of the main screen which always leads to better results than scaling on the fly.
The show was triggered using Basic Monkey's Jands Vista lighting software and M1 playback wing which is a very easy system to transport on the plane as hand luggage.
The next stop for James on the Eikon campaign is Tokyo where the arches concept will be replicated using different products.
Please check out the photos.
Thomson Reuters Eikon LED Room, New York
This morning the "LED Room" part of the Thomson Reuters Eikon campaign went live at Grand Central Terminal, New York.
The room is part of the three stage campaign for their new financial services product which was introduced with the "Digital Forest" outside the New York Stock Exchange and it's opening precedes the live launch tomorrow.
Using 3x different LED products from Barco and PixLed, a different style of LED room was created from that in London. Since the passing public would be on one side of the room and generally closer to it than London, two main screens of 7mm F-led product were chosen.
These are complemented by an arch of Barco MiTrix over the entranceway to tie in with the 'Go Live' event in the same hall. At the back of the room are two O-lite tickers to match those in the digital forest. All this adds coherence to the campaign.
The room will be open to clients and potential clients over the next 10 days.
