A beloved feature of the holidays in New York City, The Rockettes in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, which originally premiered in 1933, kicked up the level of its digital design in 2018. Obscura Digital created new dynamic projections on the ceiling of Radio City, the largest proscenium theater in the world, enveloping audience members in an immersive, eye-popping Christmas Spectacular experience, now extended through January 6, 2019.
Over 130TB of data was processed to create over 23 minutes of animation content for seven scenes in the show. With an all-native 14,000 x 14,000 pixel map, the final delivery was close to 40TB of data (the Library of Congress being 10TB). Delta 7th Sense Media playback servers drove the media to 36 Christie Digital 4K30 Boxer projectors running as 18x double-stacks to saturate the room with illuminated Christmas wonder.
The Obscura team also laser-scanned Radio City Music Hall to identify and highlight its architectural details, and created a VR simulation of the theater so they could experience the show as the audience would. They familiarized with all the aspects of the show, from storyline to choreography, costumes, lighting design, timecodes, and physical set pieces to create content that would dovetail seamlessly.
There is also a new finale to the show, “Christmas Lights,” with aerialists on stage with The Rockettes and 100 Intel drones dancing with them. Take a look at them here:
Read about David Agress' lighting design for the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular here!