Did you have the opportunity to visit one of the largest trade shows for construction equipment this year, a show called ConExpo? Held every three years, this show features extremely large booths filled with all types of machinery used in every aspect of construction, and it’s like a playground for adults (okay, males mostly) who spend a week climbing over every inch of these trucks and diggers from manufacturers like Hyundai, Konami and John Deere. Many of these booths feature shows and/or presentations showcasing various aspects of their latest technology. However, two manufacturers, Caterpillar and Volvo Construction, incorporated video mapping into their booth designs and shows, making for some eye catching and interesting visuals.
A Projection-Mapped Pyramid
Caterpillar’s large booth (approximately 200 by 200 feet) featured a large pyramid-shaped structure located in the center lit with content from eight projectors. The content showed Caterpillar’s trucks and earth movers in action at places like a rock quarry, making it look like trucks were driving up “roads” on the edges of the pyramid. This striking display allowed Caterpillar to show its machinery in use in a not-so-typical way, making the experience a more three dimensional experience that you could walk around and view from different angles. I always saw large groups of people standing around this structure, observing it as well as trying to figure out how it was done (the projectors were cleverly hidden inside a large over hanging LED wall similar to a scoreboard in a sports arena). This unique presentation definitely made an impact!
X-Ray Vision
While Caterpillar was excavating a rock quarry on one side of the main aisle, I was working away on a mapping project of a different sort in the Volvo Construction booth on the other side of the same aisle. Volvo’s 200-by-160-foot booth not only showcased all of the latest diggers, movers and pavers, it also featured an interior theatre located at the core of the booth. In this core theatre, Volvo placed one of its newest pieces of equipment, a large front-loading dozer; then a 3D video presentation was projected onto the machine that highlighted all of the latest improvements in Volvo Construction technology. Set to timecode and complete with lighting effects (designed and programmed by yours truly), this presentation was achieved through the use of two projection angles — one from the side and one from the front. Using 40K projectors, the mapped video was used to do things like highlight the drive train, rotate the wheels and explain details that were partially obstructed from view. It was as close to having X-ray vision as you can come without being Superman.
Creating spaces for video mapping presentations like these was not without some challenges. First, at Caterpillar, the pyramid structure was literally exposed on all four sides to a high level of ambient lighting in the booth. This meant that the output of the projectors had to be 20K lumens or higher, and they were doubled up on each side to further increase the output. In the Volvo presentation, the challenge of reducing as much ambient lighting as possible was no less critical. Using 40K lumen double stack projectors to cover the machine, the interior core was designed with circular walls and a detached floating roof to help eliminate the lighting from the booth itself as well as the very unflattering spill from the halide scoop lighting fixtures used in the hall for overhead lighting. Reducing the amount of ambient lighting, however, was only one of the challenges for the Volvo booth. Timing it with the presenter’s speech and other lighting cues meant additional work.
Blasting Past Ambient Light
At first, my instinct was to keep the effects lighting limited in the core during the presentation; however, after watching the show a few times in rehearsal, I realized that the projectors were powerful enough to cut through the lighting, as long as I kept the lighting off the machine directly. By adding in intensity effects, color effects, slow ballyhoos and even a Who Wants to be a Millionaire-styled fly-in moment, the crowd stayed engaged and the show’s energy remained high. But the biggest challenge in the Volvo booth during the setup was for the projectionist. His task was to converge the double stack on the machine so that all lines in his test grid were aligned. This required many hours for him sitting in the dark, working pixel-by-pixel to get the alignment just right. I am sure there may be shortcuts for doing this, but I can say that it was very tedious to perfect. In the end, he did finish it, and the result was a great show.
These two examples of video mapping show just how far our world of entertainment technology stretches. In recent years, the number of projects where video has been mapped onto the exterior of a building for advertising or for entertainment has steadily grown, so it’s not really a surprise to see marketing teams in seemingly non-entertainment related industries begin to take notice. But construction equipment? Who would have thought that dump trucks would make for good projection objects? But, you know, they do, and this use of mapping and projection is an excellent way of reaching an audience in exciting new ways. That is, after all, what marketing execs dream about and set out to achieve. The use of video mapping allows specific messages about the item to be presented in a fresh way, while at the same time entertaining the audience. In this day and age, watching a straightforward two-dimensional movie about construction equipment would likely not hold the audience’s attention, especially during the more technical parts. By using 3D video mapping, however, the audience’s imagination is captured, and they want to stay and watch the whole presentation — technical boring bits and all. This is what makes video mapping a bold new frontier for marketing. The sky is the limit in terms of “tricking” the human eye into staying engaged. And I think it’s a method of reaching audiences that will continue to be explored and implemented in exciting and creative ways for all types of industries, provided they seek to embrace the technology.
It may take at least another three years, but I’m saving up for one of those dirt diggers — they are pretty awesome!
