Jodhpur India 2013

Located in Jodhpur, India, the Umaid Bhawan Palace was brought to life by the BARTKRESA design team on October 31, 2013 for a private evening party for 300 guests. This 71 year old, 347-room palace, architecturally inspired by the Palace of Versailles was the perfect projection surface spanning 400ft. wide by 120ft. in height.

Bart Kresa’s team had exactly three weeks to conceptualize, design, paint and animate enough content for a full six hour evening. A project of this magnitude typically takes at minimum, three months to deliver. With only one site inspection and a week long install consisting of 18 hour back to back days, Bart and team created and delivered a total of 14 unique designs, carefully layered and sequenced to create a seamless transition from one environmental animation to the next. Through the use of 30 large scale video projectors, these designs were meticulously pieced together like a puzzle to fit each nuance, arch and stone of the palace front, and were choreographed together with a live concert, a professional live dance component and acted as an animated backdrop for a sit down dinner.

The opening look of a single waterfall flowing transitioned shortly after into multiple waterfalls, spilling over the entire face of the palace that set the mood and drew in guests’ attention. Out of the water, the moon is seen slowly rising over, adding a layer of light dancing on the rushing water while revealing surrounding rocks and foliage. Unbeknownst to the guests, this was the visual cue for the live concert to begin. Different looks were created and shown throughout the concert. Several distinct tone or tempo transitions were paired and brought to life through visual animation, enhancing the senses holistically.

The concert sequence transformed into a classic palace ballroom in Versailles, which was a cued backdrop for the live dance performance. The animation within the backdrop timed perfectly with the live dancing that took place on an 80ft. stage directly in front of the palace. Once the choreographed dance concluded, guests of the event joined in and the palace ballroom faded into an edgy, modern Egyptian scene with vibrant, jewel-like tombs of ancient pharaohs and digital hieroglyphics before transitioning into lush, seductive richness of traditional Indian motifs.

A few of the biggest challenges included the spontaneity nature of the client as everything was requested on the fly and without any notice. In a few instances, old looks that were not approved and therefore not fully flushed out, or new looks were requested in the middle of set-up, rehearsal or even the show itself. A show flow existed but was never used as intended, and therefore there wasn’t any structure as to how the evening would sequentially play out. Regardless of the short amount of creative development time and the extemporaneous requests on-site, BARTKRESA design once again designed a show that heightened the senses, exceeded expectations and executed it flawlessly.