To celebrate the 30th Big Blue Madness (it traces its origins back to Midnight Madness in 1982), the Rupp Arena wanted to ensure a spectacular launch for the Kentucky Wildcat’s 2012/13 season, particularly as the University of Kentucky are the current U.S. National College Basketball champions.
For the 12th October event, Bob Stoops, Technical Services Manager at Rupp Arena, contacted XL Video to specify and supply equipment and crew for a visually stunning projection directly on to the 94x50 foot basketball court. As the court became a screen, the rousing video was the perfect introduction, and got the 23,500-strong crowd pumping and ready for the scrimmage.
To provide the projection XL Video supplied 8 Barco HD20 projectors – 4 pairs in tandem in dual cradles made by Tait Towers. Projectionists on the night were Jeff Larchar and Mark Clements, and XL’s Crew Chief was Phil Evans.
Rigging for the projectors was handled by SGPS Nashville with support from David ‘Hud’ Haney and Bobby Carrell.
Content for the projectors was fed by XL’s Catalyst media server, controlled by Joe Cabrera. Joe used Datapath and Teranex scaling conversion to ensure Brent Sandrock’s content displayed perfectly on the court.
Mark Haney comment: “Big Blue Madness was a great opportunity for XL to showcase our projection talent. The overall team effort, along with incredible content from Brent Sandrock, is something that all involved can be really proud of. We really appreciate Bob Stoops’ trusting us with what is a big night for Kentucky Athletics.”