For this year’s holiday season, Comcast Corp. unveiled a 15-minute Holiday Spectacular presentation on the 80’ by 30’, 10 million pixel, 4mm LED screen in its headquarters lobby, which is open to the public.
The video was created by David Niles, director/DP/designer/editor and principal of Niles Creative Group (New York, NY). HDTV pioneer Niles chose Panasonic’s AJ-HPX3000 native 1080p one-piece P2 HD camcorder to shoot several of the holiday video segments, including a big band dance number on the Philadelphia Art Museum steps, an ice-skating musical number and footage of a recurring “maestro” character and others.
The video shows daily on the hour through New Year's at the Comcast Center, 17th and Arch Streets, Center City, Philadelphia. The last show each day begins at 8pm.
Niles had earlier used the HPX3000 to shoot The Comcast Experience video art installation for Comcast’s new corporate headquarters, Philadelphia’s tallest and one of its most stunning buildings, which opened last June. The lobby installation, instigated by Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts as a gift to the people of Philadelphia, has wowed the public and rapidly become a must-see tourist destination.
“The lobby screen has 10 million pixels—but a life-size person who appears on the screen doesn’t require 10 million pixels for video capture, two million suffice,” Niles explained. “Thus, the HPX3000, with its 2.2-megapixel CCDs, gave us a 1:1 pixel ratio and, consequently, an utterly photorealistic effect when shooting the actors for the video. That was the paramount reason I chose the Panasonic camera.”