MIAMI – The Miami Intercontinental Hotel was transformed into a swirling mix of video projections during Miami’s ULTRA Music Festival March 23-25. Integrated Visions Productions teamed with technical producer SenovvA to produce the massive “Red Bull Mind Meld” video-mapping installation, which covered 29 floors (264 ft. high) of the hotel from sundown to midnight during the three nights of the fest.
More details from Integrated Visions Productions (http://www.integratedvisions.net):
MIAMI – The 165,000 fans who got down to the sounds of electronic artists Tiesto, Avicii, David Guetta and others at Miami’s ULTRA Music Festival March 23-25 did not believe their eyes when they looked to the sky as the “Red Bull Mind Meld” experience transformed the iconic InterContinental Hotel into a sea of video projections in one of the largest-ever USA displays of innovative projection mapping technology.
At first, the InterContinental appeared completely normal; the next, (it appeared that) bricks broke free and started tumbling down. Soon the entire facade came visually crumbling to the ground, revealing gyrating, hypnotic line art that throbbed to the techno music blasting at its base. Minutes later, a gyrating psychedelic mural, created by Integrated Visions Productions, painted the side of the building. IVP teamed with technical producer SenovvA, to produce the massive “Red Bull Mind Meld” videomapping installation, which covered 29 floors (264 feet-high) of the Intercontinental Hotel from sundown to midnight the three nights of the Ultra Music Festival (March 23, 24, 25).
Integrated Visions Productions produced more than 30 custom 3D animation modules, integrating cultural and extreme sports footage from the Red Bull content pool into the projections. SenovvA, the technical solutions and production company that provided gear for the recent Oscars telecast, managed the projection.
“We had access to the complete Red Bull video library, the athletics, extreme sports, base-jumping, snow boarding, all that stuff, and we produced more than 30 original animated loops,” said Brian Blessinger, partner, Integrated Visions Productions. “We had a good mix of action footage and original party music video content. The Red Bull content was about one-fifth of the total content, the rest abstract visuals and animation that our creative team developed and designed.”
The Integrated Visions and SenovvA team played an integral role in Saturday’s surprise appearance by Madonna, having received logo files from the artist’s creative team Wednesday afternoon. Maintaining complete secrecy up through Avicii’s closing performance on Saturday night, the team precisely coordinated the Madonna logo drop with her stage entrance.
SenovvA lent its expertise to the content management and projection systems for the Red Bull Mind Meld projection mapping event, using 12 large format Barco HD projectors and UVA’s D3 media playback system to produce a larger than 20,000 sq. ft. projection. SenovvA created a projection plan that broke the massive projection surface into three zones, and then side-stacked four of the Barco projectors to saturate each zone with color.
Senovva Senior Producer Dave Taylor layered the images produced by these stacked projectors pixel to pixel, to create a single seamless image in each zone, with a total of 7,776,000 pixels (1920 x 4050) on the wall, a virtually impossible feat. Without this stacked effect, the projection wall would not have stood up to the onslaught of high intensity LED displays arrayed throughout the rest of the festival grounds.
