In all, there were 796 11.25mm lightweight FLED io11 tiles built into 14 LED stage carts for the live broadcast, all of which had to be hustled on and off the field within minutes by some 500 stagehands. The show itself packed a multitude of performances within a 12-minute time frame.
DWP Live, led by founder Danny Whetstone, installed the projectors that transformed the playing field of Lucas Oil Stadium into a dramatic complement for the large cast of halftime show performers.
Guest artists LMFAO, Cee Lo Green, M.I.A. and Nicky Minaj supported Madonna’s performance of four songs. Supporting visuals brought the large area in front of the stage to life with animations showing everything from Vogue magazine covers to reverberating speakers.
The show required months of planning and testing for LMG and DWP, and more than three weeks of dedicated time in Indianapolis. Both companies traveled to Orlando in December to test projection efforts at LMG’s corporate headquarters.
By using a crane rigged with a “pod” of four projectors over 150 feet in the air, the test ensured that image consistency would be maintained as they projected downward on to the field surface for the show.
Whetstone and the crew spent several weeks before the halftime show with hours of equipment setup and trial runs to make sure the entire performance was flawless.
DWP used 32 Barco FLM HD20 projectors, rigged into eight pods of four projectors each, to drive the intricate show on the 11,000+ square-foot projecting surface. The projectors were operated, converged and edge-blended by DWP Live using the Barco Projector Toolset located at a main control computer.
“It feels good to have a national stage to show off our capabilities,” said Whetstone. “People have seen our work on concert tours and corporate meetings, but they never know it’s us, and they never know the full extent of what we can do. So to be at the Super Bowl and be involved in the halftime show was a great chance to show the world what we do.”
