Professional Lighting & Production - Summer 2017 | Page 32

The video and projection content displayed
across the City Walk is continually changing
from advertisements to ambient displays and
scheduled shows that run for three to five
minutes every hour after dark. As far as the
experience that visitors are walking into, the
City Walk is broken into three segments: The
Gateway, Showstreet, and Place Des Lumières
(plaza of light). When visitors approach the
City Walk from the road, they’re met by two
massive 10 mm-pitch LED screens that span the
buildings along each side of The Gateway. There
are 12 LED screens in total in the City Walk, all
made by Pixcom, with the two Gateway screens
spanning 86.4 m and 57.6 m, respectively,
32 • PROFESSIONAL LIGHTING & PRODUCTION
and each being 6.48 m high. To say they grab
visitors’ attention would be an understatement.
Past the Gateway down the Showstreet, the
smaller screens provide ambiance and range
from about 8 to 48 m in length and about a
half-metre high. These LED panels are placed
across the tops of the buildings.
In addition to the LED screens, the 30 Digi-
tal Projection Titan 930 WUXGA 15K projectors
are located throughout the complex to project
onto the walls of the buildings and the ground
underfoot. An additional four Christie Roadster
S+22K-Js rise out of the ground at night to proj-
ect onto the water screens that emerge from
the fountain in the centre plaza.
To solve the problem of synchronization,
Cyr and his team integrated 30 Coolux Pandoras
Box two-in/two-out video servers, as well as
two of Float4’s own RealMotion servers. As
well, they also incorporated DM-MD64X64 and
DM-MD128X128 video matrix switchers from
Crestron. “In case of a failure, with one press
of the button, we can go on the spare server,
so there is a lot of control in the back of the
system,” adds Cyr.
Since walking through the complex is
supposed to be an immersive experience,
Meraas wanted to offer visual content on more
than three surfaces (left, right, and below);
subsequently, there is a low-res LED canopy
overhead, which is referred to as the “Diagrid,”
that spans the length of the walkway. There are
roughly 2,500 custom-made, low-res hexagonal
LED fixtures in the grid.
From the Gateway, where patrons are wel-
comed by the two mammoth LED screens, and
down the Showstreet, where there is video and
projection to the left, right, and underfoot, visi-
tors then entre the circular Place Des Lumières
to behold its eye-catching water screens. The
water screens are created by mechanical arms
that rise out of the fountain to form a projection
surface.
The only way to project onto the water
screens was to place the four 22K Christie
Roadster projectors beside the fountain. The
problem, though, was that XYZ’s client did not
want any projectors to be visible during the day
when they’re not in use. The solution for the
XYZ team was to design custom lifts that rise
out of the ground when the nighttime shows
begin. With the top of the lift covered in a black
marble that matches the base of the fountain,
they then disappear when the projectors are