Saturday, March 31, 2012
Tracking LED Wall Animation
YouTube: Animation demonstrating the integration of PRG Mbox EXtreme® v3 Media Server and the Stage Command™ System while encoding video to track with/without movement.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I find this type of scenery quite fascinating. By integrating the displayed portion into the moving panels it allows for a lot more versitile use within theatrical applications. I just watched the 25th Anniversary performance of Phantom of the Opera at the Prince Albert Theater in London and they used something extremely similiar in that production instead of thier typical scenery. I found this was just as useful and impactful. The reason why was because they were able to seamlessly integrate their scene changes in a visually stunning way. I think that this type of automation will sky rocket over the next few years and be found more prominently in more and more theaters.
This was a pretty cool video and I would love to get a chance to play with this stuff. I see a TD 4 project in the future. I would enjoy this scenery in a rock and roll or cruise ship setting. I saw Spider-man during “previews” and they used a very similar style. During the second act the tabs were giant screens. I felt a little gipped. I need not pay $85 to see Spider man fight projected villains. I can do that on my couch. Perhaps this technology is not in the current Spider-man offering but I am sure that it is. This makes me long for the old days when the scenery was made out of stuff and there was a show curtain. Perhaps there will be a Broadway revival to tradition scenery . . . . And gas lamps.
The tracking elements of Mbox are indeed cool, but I am more impressed with the animation that they did in this video, and am wondering how they made it...
Another thing that you often see in media more than in any other discipline is proprietary products, and I wonder why that is. Hippotizer and VYV also offer a service/product integration, and up with what we end is a whole bunch of products that do similar things but with a completely different architecture.
I was also impressed with PRG's truss package shown in this video. It seems to be an improvement on Tomcat's old swing wing design, and would absolutely streamline lighting and staging rig setups.
It's really cool to see what can be done with the combination of scenic and media elements. I know that something like this could be pre-programmed in the video rendering, but I bet it saves so much time for the video screens and their relative locations to be dynamically positioning the content so changes can be made on the fly. PRG's truss and lighting transport/storage system appears to be really well designed based on the animations at the end of the video.
This is another step forward in projections but until it can create a three dimensional environment that the actor can inhabit it will continue that gipped feeling that Dale has. We have taken a step backward with projections because it is still two dimensional and very rarely is it integrated enough with actual scenery that is creates a correct illusion for three dimensional believability. The movement with encoders giving position seems like such a small technological step until it is fed into the projection program. This technology must have had a horrible amount of bugs found in research and development and I question how stable this technology is.
This all seems like fairly innovative integration of technology. The position tracking of the automation with the media seems like a great opportunity for some new interactive action between actors and media. Not to mention having all lights, media, and automation on communicating together suggests PRG moving in a direction of single operator control.
Wow, this is pretty incredible technology being developed. While media is still finding its place in the traditional theatrical world, this would be great for a rock and roll show or cruise ships as Dale suggests.
To answer Dale, the screens are still there, I saw Spiderman over spring break. And I agree, seeing him fight villains on the screen isn't quite worth the cost of a ticket. Similarly, in the new show, Ghost they have three giant media walls that track across the stage in an attempt to add to the show, but really they are just a distraction. While media is cool and the next big thing, I am with Dale, I would love to see traditional scenery return to Broadway.
Post a Comment