LOS ANGELES — Like TV screens themselves, the 60th annual Emmy Awards program went HD in a big way this year. Staged at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, HD images during the event appeared on 15 different screens, including five projection screens, four LED displays and six plasma flat panel displays. American Hi Definition, Inc. powered the stage with Christie Roadster 3-chip DLP projectors and a Christie Vista Spyder. A 53-foot HD Cobalt Truck, provided by Sweetwater Digital Productions, interfaced with Stimulated Inc.’s eight-foot-by-32-foot custom production trailer. The 32-foot trailer served as the screens’ control room and housed the 30-layer Vista Spyder, which fed all of the video sources.
Above the stage there were five screens showing 13.5-foot-by-24-foot projected images. Each screen had a Christie Roadster S+16K and Christie Roadster S+20K overlay, with five 720p feeds tethered respectively. They showed nomination packages from a wide shot and then focused on the five nominees.
An LED display situated upstage created scenic backgrounds to complement graphics, nomination categories and live feeds. The Christie Roadster HD18K projectors displayed support footage, while various plasma displays supplied scenic elements.
“They always perform very well for us,” said American Hi Definition’s Erez Ram, of the Christie Roadster projectors used for the event. “We made the right decision to go with them.”
“This is the biggest all-HD show we’ve done,” said Robb Wagner, owner/founder of Stimulated, Inc. and screen producer/director for the event, noting that the executive producer for the event and the president of the TV academy were “thrilled” with the way things turned out.
Stimulated, Inc.’s team of designers created original content for the show. “ Greg Byrnes of High Resolution Engineering came in to provide technical assistance and was instrumental,” Wagner added. “We built the control room together in Stimulated’s office, packed it up and put it in the field.”
The Vista Spyder proved versatile enough to adapt to widescreen (edge-blended), single and multi-screen applications. With up to 6.5-million-pixel display capacity from a single frame, it provides multiple outputs from the same box and up to 2048 x 1200 resolution on each output.
The Christie Roadster series of three-chip DLP projectors were used at the Emmys for a fourth consecutive time.
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