Us Too Conference - ICC Durban

Commissioned and designed by Dean Fourie of Integrity Promotions, the 360 Us Too conference held at the Durban ICC this past February was one of Sound Stylists greatest AV conference challenges to date. Pumping 15 million pixels of video and hi-res stills onto a 100m by 7.5m seamless screen proved that nothing is impossible with a little ingenuity and 10 tons of gear…

The conference area was built from a square structure – each side wall measuring a staggering 25m x 7.4 m tall. It took four days of construction to build the walls, which were then covered with projection cloth. This created 100 running meters of full HD surround projection screen area – a total pixel space of 14 760 by 1080. 8 Barco HD projectors were paired, 2 on each wall for the wide screen blend. The projectors, six Barco FLM HD 20, and two Barco FLM HD 14 all had standard lenses of 1.5 – 2. HD-SDI cables were used to send the feed to the projectors, creating a perfect, clean signal.

Sound Stylists chose to use Wings Platinum 4 for this conference. Wings is a timeline based playback inter media server, which allows for the creative combining of images, videos, text, sound, light and effects. With its on screen editing and effects generator, it was the perfect solution for creating the AV intensity required for this particular conference. The Wings Platinum 4 was run with one master and one slave pc. The feeds from here were patched into the Christie Vista Spyder X20. The Vista Spyder performed above all expectations, allowing for the smooth and easy switching of backgrounds which were projected in a full 360 degrees. “With the Spyder X20, the blends and gamma adjustments were as easy as 1, 2, 3…” says Johan Botha, AV tech on the show.

In order to enhance the incredible visuals, a perfect sound solution needed to match. The Coda LA 8 line array active system was used. 4 clusters used with 4 cabs in a cluster. 4 Ps 15’s were used as front fills and to get rumble in the room 4 MTL 2’s were used under centre stage. All were perfectly matched up using Rational Acoustics Smaart 7.

The show as a whole was an incredible success, an AV visual spectacular appreciated by both client and crew. It has definitely opened many new doors to conferencing possibilities in South Africa.

For more information on Integrity Promotions visit www.integritypromotions.co.za