Paul Carey, President, Marketing Specialists, Inc and Tim Brooksbank, Chairman, Calibre UK

With Hollywood’s finest in the auditorium and a live worldwide audience estimated at tens of millions, AV productions don’t come much bigger – or more challenging – than the Oscar Night®. The pressure is on to create a high-impact feast for the senses, and that inevitably leads to the technological bar being raised, as production company SenovvA discovered when it found the need to use sophisticated warp-generation from Calibre UK at this year’s ceremony.

Tim Brooksbank, Chairman, Calibre UK takes up the story: “In the center of the set for this year’s Academy Awards, there was a cylindrical projection screen showing clips of nominated movies. When logos and general graphics were shown, this cylindrical projection screen rotated open to reveal an LED display, the rear surface.�

“The challenge is that if you project onto a curved surface, you get a distorted picture. The initial idea was to use the in-built warping capability of the projection system but this proved insufficient – the amount of 180-degree warp was right at the limit of the projector lens capability and exceeded its inbuilt warp range, which is why we were approached to provide external image processing. Using the Warp Generator functionality of our PVProHD-IW processor, the image was geometrically corrected and the on-stage result looked fantastic.�

In fact, a pair of identical projector-and-processor systems was supplied by SenovvA to the Ceremony so that in the event of a failure, the film-clip imaging would not be lost. In the event, the system worked perfectly and no back-up was needed. Calibre UK’s master representative for North America, Paul Carey helped specify the equipment, providing training and technical support to SenovvA personnel.

Tim Brooksbank concludes: “The PVproHD-IW has a comprehensive set of configuration tools, and its ability to warp streaming video in real time on live sets such as this one is of vital importance to TV and event production crews. We were delighted to be able to assist SenovvA with the realization of this project. This was a very challenging configuration for our equipment and for the installers, but the overall result looked great to the audience. It’s hard to imagine a better endorsement for an AV industry product than Oscar Night – a ceremony which, more than any other, celebrates excellence in film production, creativity, and technique.â€?

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