Credits
Overall Video production company: Visual Solutions.Technical Production Manager: Jo Pauly (Visual Solutions)
Project Leader/Manager: Michael “mica” Stroobants (Visual Solutions)
Logistics team leader: Tim Lerat
d3 team: Lex Ter Heurne – Kjell Reintjes – Uwe Schröder – Patrick Bellens
Projection team: David Vandevelde, Bert Decock, Siel De Schepper, Dries Van Havermaet, Oliver Dier, Sander De Wandel, Sander De Schrijver, Benjamin Oehl, Kevin Roten
Content studio: Dirty Monitor Belgium
Event Production: Filmmaster MEA
Technical Director: Julien Poncelet Filmmaster MEA
All video Equipment: Video Equipment Rentals (VER)
Last 6 December, His Royal Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud officially inaugurated the long-expected cultural hub of Saudi Arabia: the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture.
AV expert Visual Solutions helped mark the event with an amazing video projection mapping powered by 52 Barco projectors (26 HDQ-2K40 and 26 HDF-W30) delivered and serviced on site by Video Equipment Rentals (VER) and running the whole show on 6 x d3 technologies 4×4 PRO VFC machines.
The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is an initiative by Saudi Aramco, the Kingdom’s major oil company.
An amazing design by Snøhetta (the Norwegian architectural firm behind the impressive Oslo Opera House), the center aims to promote cultural development in the Kingdom. Anchored by a library with 200,000 pristine books, the building also has a cinema, a large auditorium, exhibition halls, a museum, and more. The prestigious project demanded a truly grand opening, so Saudi Aramco called in the help of Filmmaster MEA Events. In less than 1 month, Visual Solutions was able to put together the right video equipment, develop and produce the show and put together the right crew. On top of that we installed and aligned the 52 projector show in less than 10 days.
Some background on the event:
At first our client had requested to do a 180 degree mapping of the building, then it became 270 degrees and we ended up with a full 360 degree videomapping.
Visual Solutions’ Jo Pauly pulled a team together during pre-production at the start of 2016. But the event got postponed to early December 2016. The UV mapping of the building had already been done by d3 studio By-Lex from Cologne, one of our partners on this show.
The entire show was initially designed with a combo of 21k projectors and 40k projectors for a total of more than 86 projectors. Since we had to react really quickly eearly November 2016, we designed the whole show around Barco’s HDQ 40 and HDF-W30 machines to have power and resolution combined in 1 projector.
The initial show date was to be Nov 25 2016, but on the event night, very heavy rainfall had flooded the whole area, so everything got postponed till Dec 6 2016.
The show consisted not only of an outside mapping, but the indoor show featured a holographic led show also driven by a d3 v2.5 and a mapping of a miniature model of the actual building, ran from a d3 4×4 VFC. On top of that a big show took place in the ARAMCO operational center with moving ROE 3mm screens and E2 control provided by Visual Solutions.
Some preview of the actual general rehearsal night: