E\T\C UK Tells the T200 Tale

Large format projection specialists E\T\C UK worked for London-based show creators and producers Innovision to supply a PIGI projection system for Trafalgar Square 200 ‘The Spirit of Nelson’ show, staged in London’s most famous Square in front of 10,000 people.
The one-hour live show on behalf of the Royal Navy was the final event in this year’s Trafalgar 200 celebrations to recognise the 200-year anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The show was also designed to recognise the contribution of the Royal Navy to maritime history generally and also highlight its relevance as a modern phenomenon.
Projection was the show’s main pictorial element supporting a narrative that told the story of various Naval triumphs. Images were beamed onto a special retractable ‘sail’ rigged onto the centre of three masts, creating a symbolic version of Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory.
On site, the projector (complete with ‘hot’ backup) was located in a specially built ‘hide’, with a 17 metre throw distance and fitted with a Barco 1.2 lens, to beam up onto the 12 metre wide by 10 metre high sail. At a steep 45 degree angle, with extreme keystone correction, the images filled the whole surface, soft masked to bleed off the edges.
Once in situ, by keystone recalculations, they were able to reduce the physical angle of the projectors to 30 degrees by using only the ‘top’ half of the projector beam to make the picture.
The projection consisted of 45 slide images. The images were researched and sourced by the Innovision team, and then treated, transformed into PIGI artwork, masked and keystone corrected by E\T\C UK’s Ross Ashton. The historic images were amassed from various museums and archives. Ashton also created some new custom artwork and graphics from scratch for specific moments, e.g. newspaper headlines in the typeface of the day, etc., that moved the story forward.
(CD/SP)