E\T\C UK supplied widescreen projection for the RBI Achievement Awards event at Grosvenor House, London for producer Tom Perkins and his client, Reed Business International, one of the UK’s largest business communications specialists.
After delivering a highly successful circular ‘in-the-round’ projection for Perkins earlier in the year at the same venue, E\T\C was asked to come up with a new video solution for the RBI event.
E\T\C UK supplied two of their new Christie 25K HD projectors, two Barco R18 projectors, and an OnlyView control system for the show. The projectors were positioned side by side on the balcony of the main room at Grosvenor House, their images soft-edged together to form one large super-bright 70’ wide by 18’ deep image in 16:9 format.
The event started with speeches followed by a dinner and then the awards.
Using OnlyView, E\T\C UK created ‘windows’ in the main screen for playback and IMAG video footage (projected via the R18s) to appear during the speech section of the evening and again for some of the Awards presentations.
The ‘Window’ playback footage and VT play-in material was supplied from the client’s own PPU, overseen by Perkins. A live 4-camera IMAG mix supplied by StageRight was also fed into the OnlyView system, and woven into the show by E\T\C’s programmer and operator Philip Pieridis. He comments, “Creating this effect in OnlyView is extremely quick and easy—one of the great advantages and flexibility of this system, especially when you have limited onsite programming time.”
Perkins also supplied the E\T\C team with a series of digital backgrounds—consisting of both stills and video clips—which were loaded into OnlyView and projected across the whole screen and the entire surface area of the stage and set, using moving images highly effectively as projected scenery.
Later on in the evening, “picture-in-picture” effects were created using OnlyView and the Christie 25s. The projectors were fed live camera footage that was projected onto the screen and over the stage and set, making live, quirky, and funky backdrops out of real time audience footage and action.
The show backgrounds, sponsors logos, and general branding messages for the night were also all programmed by Pieridis from within OnlyView.
The entire event, including creation and sourcing of all the footage and video clips, was compiled by E\T\C UK working closely with Perkins in less than a week, and programmed in four days at E\T\C‘s HQ in Barking, East London. With no heavy rendering time required in OnlyView—the software works in real time—this process is extremely fast.
Also on the E\T\C crew were technician Briony Margets, and head of video Andy Joyes, who comments, “Creating the set projection using the two Christie K25s gave the client the kind of animated set wash and image brightness that would previously have been impossible. OnlyView allows us to create exciting effects very easily, and also to install and run the show under the time pressures that are the norm for these kinds of events.”