The comedy, starring Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick as dueling neighbours, thrusts intelligent LED lighting into the national spotlight as DeVito's character attempts to turn his house into the world's biggest and most brilliant holiday display. His ambitions are realised when the entire house is transformed into a traffic-halting multimedia light show made possible by Color Kinetics' LED technology.
"This is a film that literally hinges on the lighting -- where the lights are a central character. Anything less than spectacular would have failed the story," said Jason McKinnon of Electric Aura Lighting Design, who conceptualised the lighting sequences along with Rob Sondergaard. "Based on their highly programmable and durable nature, we knew that LEDs were the only feasible choice to make our concept a reality. Color Kinetics' technology exceeded our expectations, allowing us to turn the house into a three-dimensional video display that is the movie's climatic centerpiece."
The project was achieved using Color Kinetics iColor Flex SL, which resembles a traditional holiday string light, but allows precise digital control of every node on the strand. Each thimble-sized node houses a tri-color LED that's capable of producing 64 billion colours through additive colour-mixing of red, green and blue light - much like a pixel in a video screen. Strands of iColor Flex SL lined the home's exterior from top to bottom - comprising 14,300 nodes in all and essentially wrapping the home in a digital skin.
Based on the vision of Deck the Halls director John Whitesell and production designer Bill Brzeski, holiday-themed light animations were designed and streamed via a media server to the LED nodes, which projected the content back.
"This is a milestone project for Color Kinetics, demonstrating both the power of our technology and the sophisticated level of programming that can be achieved with LED sources. Even by today's elaborate standards, this is a holiday lighting display that breaks new ground in its ambitious scale and design - far surpassing the capabilities of conventional light sources," said Bill Sims, president and CEO, Color Kinetics. "We're very proud of our technology's role in the film, and believe it will expose entirely new audiences to the near-infinite creative potential of intelligent LED lighting."
With over 12,000 Color Kinetics installations in action worldwide, the technical feats achieved for Deck the Halls are just the latest example of the company's world-leading expertise in intelligent LED lighting technology. Stakes were especially high for this project, however, as the entire lighting scheme had to be defined, installed and programmed in just five weeks.
(Chris Henry)
