CT’s iconic videowall becomes centrepiece for Unilever

As the stunning centrepiece for Unilever’s annual senior management conference held at Twickenham, a vast videowall was built using 61 Infinite Plasma 4250 screens providing a unique and visually innovative presentation environment.

Provided by Creative Technology, who worked closely with event organisers Goose Communications, and with the help of videowall specialists PSCo, the videowall became the largest formation of Infinite plasmas ever to be built for a UK event.

The videowall, split across nine separate clusters, and utilising 61 seamless plasma screens, was designed to work as one giant screen with a huge 6x6 screen formation forming the spectacular focal point to the display.

The 61 panel plasma screen was fed with nine channels of Watchout for the content to be synchronised across all the screens, with three of the larger screens fed by Spyder in order that the camera and Watchout system could be fed directly to them.

Graham Miller, who project managed the event for Creative Technology, was delighted at how the production was delivered from brief to conference: “Goose Communications were looking for a new visual look for the set and came to us with a very clear and quite ambitious creative vision; it was a really exciting and challenging project to get involved with. Delivering the technical production of both the conference and the following gala dinner, we enlisted the help of PSCo to install the complex videowall installation. It was a pivotal element and I wanted to work with a supplier that I could trust would do a great job, and work within our team to the high standards expected by such a key client.”

PSCo’s Project Manager Andy Turner explains the complex installation: “CT worked with Black Out to plan and build a large truss structure to hold the screens, which amounted to over two tonnes of plasma. One of the huge advantages of the Infinite Plasma is the tiny seam gap, creating high impact, seamless images, but this does require the very precise placement of each screen in situ. The set was built in pieces, and we had to work with the set builders and riggers to ensure everyone was working to the same exact specifications. The screens had to be accurately placed down to the millimetre, and pixel perfect in order to view the incredible content created by CT.”

CT’s Graham Miller describes why the Orion Infinite Plasma 4350R became the chosen seamless plasma for this production. “The plasma offers high resolution images that could maintain a uniform aesthetic. The content we created, programmed as one large pixel space, was split into nine parts corresponding to each cluster of screens. Using Watchout, each cluster was then connected to its own computer, and the outputs for each allowed the highest possible resolution. We also connected three of the screens to Spyder to allow us to switch the screens between the generated media and live camera feeds or video playback.”

The content for the screens was created with Goose Communications’ software and visual graphics.

Creative Technology also provided all the equipment for the themed breakout rooms and the evening’s gala dinner. This included additional plasma screens, projectors and cameras located around the venue in addition to a complete back up infrastructure.