LONDON — E/T/C London projected video images onto the 353-foot-height Shell building for the Mayor of London’s 2009 New Year’s Eve festivities. E/T/C has worked with producers Jack Morton Worldwide on the event for the last five years, but this was the first time projected video was used for the event.
"It was another milestone in giant video projection for E/T/C London,” said E/T/C’s Ross Ashton. LG Electronics was the main sponsor for the event. The building is located on the South Bank of the River Thames.
E/T/C's Richard Porter designed the technical installation, which used 24 Christie S+20K projectors, all rigged vertically and run in 12 overlaid pairs. These covered a 12-zone grid — three wide and four high — measuring 55 meters wide by 110 tall on the façade of the building that faces the river. The total resolution was 2888 by 5184 pixels, higher than HD.
The projectors were positioned 150 meters away from the building in a 12-meter-high structure, custom-built for the task. An adjacent cabin housed an E/T/C OnlyView control system that Richard Porter used for the show.
Porter programmed the 30-minute looped show, assisted by Karen Monid, using 18 OnlyView media servers. They used 16 servers for visuals and the two others for a soundtrack.
Ross Ashton collaborated with Jack Morton’s Kate MacKay on the creation of the artwork. BBH created the LG branding and a series of celebrity New Year greetings, which included the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Dame Helen Mirren and others.
E/T/C also installed a preview monitor system, set up to show the client show visualizations during the set up and programming period. E/T/C's Paul Highfield came up with a video wall solution for this, using Dexion racking.
The load-in began on Dec. 27, with E/T/C engineers Robin Darraux, Patrice Lefevre and Glenn Jenkins. Jack Morton's project manager was Jim Donald.
Projections kicked off at 8 p.m. on New Year’s Eve as up to 400,000 revelers gathered in central London to await the rollover moment into 2009. A countdown clock comprising a burning fuse that snaked around the building as the minute-to-midnight moment approached was visualized by Ashton and produced in After Effects by Porter.
For more information, please visit www.projecting.co.uk.
