A ballroom in London's Buckingham Palace was the site for a concert marking the 90th anniversary of The Not Forgotten Association, which was founded in 1920 to entertain disabled military personnel and veterans. The event was also accompanied by a 90-minute large format video projection show designed by The Projection Studio. The event, authorized by the Queen and produced by Major Sir Michael Parker, brought 450 serving personnel and veterans to the Buckingham Palace ballroom where the Projection Studio featured archival footage from both World Wars to help tell the story of the charity's history.
The Projection Studio used eight Christie 18K HD video projectors configured to form a wrap-around projection onto all four walls and the ceiling of the ballroom, with a stage at one end.
The space, first completed in 1855, is 34 meters long by 18 meters wide and 14 meters high. It was last restored in 2002 in time for The Queen's Golden Jubilee.
The projection provided a rolling narrative for the evening plus digital scenery, backdrops and settings for some of the solo pieces, such as a 1930s-style café for male vocal quartet Blake and a downtown neon-esque cityscape for British comedian David Copperfield.
Parker, a veteran organizer of Royal live and special events, had worked with The Projection Studio's Ross Ashton on previous events. The show featured an orchestra and choir plus live appearances by several leading performers including Rick Wakeman, the former keyboardist from YES.
Making a fully immersive projection happen in this room was a logistical brainteaser for Ashton, the challenges of which only became apparent after the first site survey. Eight enormous chandeliers grace the room, all of which cause huge shadowing problems for projectors, and those had to be minimized.
There are also virtually no flat surfaces around the room, which also features numerous intricate and ornate architectural details. All of this needed meticulous positioning and line-up of the projectors.
For the images on the two long walls, Ashton used two projectors positioned at each end of each wall, cross-focused and blended back into the center of the walls. This was the only way to avoid cross shadows from the chandeliers.
The other four projectors were pointing upwards at 50 degrees and cross-shooting onto the ceiling, again positioned and focused to minimize the chandelier shadows. All machines were fitted with short-throw lenses.
The set-up timescale was extremely tight. The crew had 13 hours the day before the show and another 13 hours on show day itself before the performance to rig the intricate system.
Since Ashton was in South Africa working on the large format video projections for the World Cup Closing Ceremony, Paul Chatfield created the video content.
Chatfield spent an intensive three weeks compiling and creating all the material. As Projection Studio has done several military-themed shows before with Major Sir Michael Parker, they were able to draw from an ample amount of existing historical archive material.
The competed show video footage was uploaded to OnlyView control system server, and the show was programmed and operated by Richard Porter. The projectionists were Karen Monid, Glen Jenkins and Viral Patel.
Although Ross Ashton's work has been projected onto Buckingham Palace several times in recent years, starting with his projections for the Queen's Golden Jubilee Celebrations in 2002, this was the first time that he and his company have been able to work inside the building.
