"According to one popular Polish saying 'It's not necessary for a man to eat, but to sail - it is,'" laughs Rafael Kociemski of Polish screen company Wizja Sp. "That is how important an event the Tall Ships is to Szczecin."
Proof of this was provided by a crowd of 1.5 million which came to admire the ships in Szczecin harbour, making it the largest Polish outdoor event of 2007. In total over 200 ships took part, accompanied by a wide variety of other attractions, performances and concerts, which took place on a number of stages around the harbour.
Medialne Narzedzie LED Consulting, a joint venture between Wizja and Austrian company WMW LED Consulting, installed two Lighthouse LED screens - comprising 49 panels of R12 and 81 panel of R19 respectively - which showed a wide variety of footage, from the live concerts to pre-recorded advertisements, promotional clips and also live footage from cameras installed in a variety of locations along the route as the ships neared their destination. The farthest of these was located 80km away, on a lighthouse at the mouth of the Odra river, up which the ships sailed to reach Szczecin.
The main circulation area of the event was the area between the harbour and the imposing Theatre Wspólczesny building and it was here that the Lighthouse screens were erected, back-to-back. The larger screen faced the river, enabling those on the ships and on Grodzka Island opposite to also enjoy the moving images.
With the organisation taking six months, this was a major event for Medialne Narzedzie. "Although we have many years experience in providing LED screens for events, the site provided quite a challenge," says Medialne Narzedzie's Tomasz Wysocki. "Mounting the screens required a crane with a 60m jib and there are only a few such cranes in Poland.
"It then took our several dozen-strong specialist team 24 hours to erect the screens, which says a lot about the scale and difficulty of the project. But we are very proud of being part of such a giant event and we were very happy with the result. The quality of the Lighthouse screens was obvious for all to see and it proved once again that our investment in Lighthouse products was an excellent one."
• PLASA07 sees Lighthouse Technologies exhibiting in their own right for the first time on stand F85. It will be showing its best selling R4 4mm and R6 6mm LED screens, as well as its new LIP-XGA processor.
(Jim Evans)
