SUSSEX, U.K. — At the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed, Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) provided a video wall from Christie MicroTiles measuring 12.25 meters wide and 2.754 meters high, using 270 MicroTiles. The display, the largest yet to be built for temporary use in Europe, was for the Audi stand at the event’s indoor exhibition pavilion area at the Goodwood House in Sussex.
CPL – with locations in the West Midlands and Bristol – was asked by Twofour to create the video wall for Audi. The car maker wanted a bright and prominent wall curving around one corner of the stand on which to show rolling video footage and graphics relating to a whole range of autos.
A number of new Audi models were also on display on the stand, which was in a glass pavilion, so the screen had to be clearly visible in daylight. The brief also stated that the screen or wall should not distract from the cars, a challenge for any large hi-impact surface area.
CPL’s team of Scott Pearson from the Kenilworth office and Nick Diacre from the Bristol office collaborated on the project.
LED was bright enough for the application, but a very high resolution was needed as some of the content was running in full HD and needed to be clearly visible to visitors even when they were very close up to the screen. Plasmas would not give the curvature. They also needed something that could look neat and tidy with the technical elements easily conceal-able, so projection was out.
Ultimately, they opted for Christie MicroTiles. Based on DLP technology, MicroTiles are designed for high ambient light level environments.
The wall’s 13 meter arc wrapped around the corner of the stand. CPL had a special plinth fabricated that stood a meter off the floor and formed the base of the installation. It was painted in a matte dark gun metal RAL color to match other elements of Audi’s branding and blend in with the MicroTile wall.
All the video footage was stored in a Pandora’s Box media server, and output to the screen via a Christie Spyder x20 screen management system programmed by Diacre. They ran six video outputs to the wall, which was split into six sections, all edge-butted together in the Pandora’s Box. Both static and Moving PiPs also appeared on the Wall during the looped video show, all controlled and time aligned via the Spyder, which ran everything automatically and continuously from 8am to 6pm each day of the event.
Audio was an important part of the whole Audi AV experience, so CPL supplied a high quality d&b 3.1 surround sound audio system which was integrated into the base of the MicroTiles Wall. The speakers were d&b E6s with E15 subs, and the actual track was also run through the Pandora’s Box.
The ‘hot’ backup system included six MacBook Pros running Payback Pro.
Pearson and Diacre worked with a crew of six other technicians plus local crew for the setup and load-out, with three CPL techs looking after the system day-to-day while the event was live.
The biggest challenge, it turned out, was amassing that many MicroTiles during one of the busiest weekends of the summer event and festival season.
For more information, please visit www.cplav.com.
