Toyota Conference and Exhibition

An exhibition, a spectacular show with dancers, vehicles whizzing around an arena, screens dividing to reveal new and developing products and appearances by Formula One racing drivers Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli, all followed by a gala dinner… These were the elements that went together to form Toyota Motor Europe’s recent European Retailer Meeting.

Held in London’s ExCel at the end of May, this extravaganza - conceived and executed by experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide, with all video elements realised by leading audio-visual services company Creative Technology (CT) - certainly rivalled the biggest of shows.

Attracting around 3,000 delegates at each show on 29th and 31st May from Toyota’s European retailer network and taking over the majority of ExCel - the North Hall of which alone spans 32,250m2 - it was divided into three areas, straddling the main Boulevard and running from Halls 9 to 16.

On arrival, the delegates entered a plenary area, which was configured as an arena. Along one side, two, two column MiTRIX screens flanked three projection screens and two, four column sections of MiTRIX, the latter tracking sideways to reveal the vehicles. These showed a combination of still and moving images, produced by Software Producer Sharon Stansfield, to complement and augment video imagery provided by Toyota, including an opening sequence featuring a swimmer being chased from one screen to the next by a shark.

A five channel Watchout system was conceived by CT's Media Services Tim Volker, to cope with the demands of both the individual and combined palette of screens. The Watchout channels were subsequently fed into CT's Spyder system for final control and mixing, combining PowerPoint presentations created by Jack Morton with IMAG from the seven cameras enlisted to capture the event along with other video elements from CT’s new K2 hard drives.

Ultimate flexibility was required and, even with certain elements of the show being run from Watchout with timecode controlling other departments, the team was able to resolve any timing issues that were raised once the production moved into the arena and all elements were put together for the first time.

To ensure that the projection screens could cope with the TV-white painted floor, and that the colour temperatures were consistent across all the screens, four projectors were quadruple converged onto each projection screen and a mask was run over the MiTRIX screens.

“You couldn’t tell we were using four projectors, which really is a testament to the two projectionists, Kevin Evans and Lewis Atkinson,” says Gerry Francke, CT’s project manager for the event. “And their colour temperatures worked really well against the LED, so we were able to match all the screens perfectly.”

With a series of set piece theatrical items, a dance sequence with car reveals, as well as various presentations to cover, CT needed to supply seven cameras for this particular room. “A hot head camera was positioned directly above the stage to capture a particular dance sequence where the Toyota logo was recreated by the dancers lying on the floor,” adds Francke.

From here, the delegates moved through to an exhibition hall, where a series of white, rectangular ‘pods’ were suspended above each vehicle. In each pod CT had positioned a 10,000-lumen projector, rear-projecting imagery supplied by Toyota onto its sides, plus a series of plasma screens situated at intervals around the hall.

“We came up with a nifty new idea for the pods,” says Francke. “By running the video from a Mac Mini, sited up inside each one alongside the projector, and then networking everything, we did away with the need for signal cables. And the system auto-booted, which meant we didn’t have to get up inside the pods, which would have been very tricky.”

From the exhibition, the delegates continued on to a gala dinner, which included entertainment from a house band playing excerpts from musicals such as Cabaret, Les Miserables and Mamma Mia.
The set up here included two large projections screens, stage left and right, fed by a camera system which supplied 90% of the imagery, with only a small amount of graphical content to introduce the numbers. Everything was run at video line level to avoid any delay or scaling issues, although it was rigged for both video and data to account for all eventualities. A further hot head camera was positioned in the truss, as well as three standard camera positions, to enable the director to give a bit more of a three-dimensional feel to things.

“It was a complex show,” concludes Francke. “We had 30 or so video crew on site during the show days, the brief constantly evolved, we used just about every bit of technology we possess. And the result? “It was stunning!”

“We need to have absolute confidence in the companies we work with” comments Adrian Power, Executive Producer, Jack Morton Worldwide. “We have worked with CT on many occasions, we know they will always give us great results and this was no exception”.