Painting with Light makes Senses for Panasonic
- Details
In 2017, Painting with Light’s creative director Luc Peumans developed a show that featured simultaneous tracking and projecting onto multiple objects, resulting in a dynamic live performance piece that combined a number of cutting-edge technologies, illustrating their capabilities, together with the flexibility of Panasonic’s latest projectors.
This year, Luc received a brief from Panasonic’s European product marketing manager for projectors and visual solutions, Thomas Vertommen, who wanted to take it one step further and create a more graphical show that was even more technically ambitious.
Panasonic is continuously following live entertainment trends to establish how best to showcase relevant technologies at ISE, and this year Thomas suggested a more futuristic performance altogether which included the use of holograms, tracking and mapping, all working in conjunction with Panasonic-selected partners like disguise, BlackTrax and Novaline.
From this starting point, Luc conceived and developed a special 6-minute movement piece called Senses in collaboration with show director Frank de Wulf and choreographer Roy Julien.
A team from Painting with Light was assembled to produce bespoke video content and design a meticulously detailed projection show / system based around two dancers, four projection boxes, 12 projectors and a new generation of holographic screens from Novaline.
Integrated into the show was BlackTrax real-time motion tracking, with disguise gx2 media servers sitting at the heart of the system to handle all the playback video and camera feeds, outputting them via the projectors to a selection of different surfaces.
A major goal was to achieve true holographic effects using images of the dancers, for which it was necessary to create some completely black areas in the middle of a bright and extremely busy exhibition hall.
Hence the plan to construct the double-decker theatre space comprising four boxes - two up and two down - each measuring 3m wide by 2.5m high with a 4m depth, which were fully enclosed.
The front of the boxes were covered in screen material stretched tight. At the rear of each box, a Panasonic PT-RZ31 31,000lm laser projector was located, fitted with a short throw lens, projecting onto the back of the (front) screen material.
A Panasonic PT-RZ21 20,000lm machine fitted with an ultra-short throw lens was positioned in the front of each box, pointing to the back wall which was covered in a special ‘black screen’ material, also from Novaline.
The installation’s other four projectors were Panasonic PT-RZ21s.
Lighting was programmed using a grandMA2 system by Painting with Light’s Jeroen Opsteyn with Katleen Selleslagh programming video and the disguise servers. Ivar Van Dijk assisted in setting up the BlackTrax system. The show was set to timecode from a soundscape commissioned by Painting with Light and composed by Studio Regie.
Luc comments, “It was another great opportunity to partner with Panasonic and produce a show to engage thousands of exhibition visitors. Live entertainment is still something of a rarity at these events and it was fantastic to see so many people stop and look and then share the experience in multiple ways. Taking an imaginative approach to illustrating the dynamics and scope of these exciting technologies and how they can be beautifully blended with classic theatrical techniques … is definitely a winner.”
(Jim Evans)
