Christie

Wokingham, UK (August 2011). Production AV fielded the largest temporary Christie MicroTiles display ever at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed — configured in a highly original design.

Working for Twofour Digital, the Gloucester-based AV specialists commandeered no fewer than 270 Tiles, configured in a giant concave 30 x 9 display to help car manufacturer Audi showcase its entire range.

Production AV were brought in by Central Presentations Ltd, to whom they had earlier demonstrated MicroTiles. The latter, in turn, introduced Twofour Digital and Audi to the unique technology when they were looking for a jaw-dropping media display that would wow visitors to their touring pavilion at Goodwood.

“When they saw MicroTiles they decided to fill the whole of one wall with a curved display, giving them a 12m x 2.7m screen,” said Production AV project manager, Sam McCrea. Set on a 1m high plinth the display was the largest temporary MicroTiles installation yet seen in Europe.

The screen showed footage created by the Twofour Digital team showcasing the best of Audi on a 30-minute loop. Video coverage included a range of Audi racing cars heading up the famous 1.16 mile hill climb, including an Auto Union Type D, Audi R8 LMS and the Audi R18 TDI sports prototype that raced in this year’s Le Mans 24 hours.

Twofour also provided on-demand video content for the Audi team to use on their social networking sites. To construct such a large display with its precision curvature had required careful prep time — and a lot of resourcefulness, as Production AV set out in search of the requisite number of tiles to complement their own inventory. “We set it up in the warehouse with a 6mm wedge between the back of each tile to get the curvature; but they coupled easily, and when we switched on the display the impact was immediate,” stated McCrea.

The content was fed from a Pandoras Box media player as well as five MacBook Pro’s running PlaybackPro, via an eight-output Christie Spyder X20 processor.

“We used six outputs of Spyder for the MicroTiles walls, splitting the display into six separate sub arrays — with three 10 x 5 as the top row and three 10 x 4 arrays on the bottom,” explained the Production AV project manager. “That enabled us to work in full 1920 HD resolution for each array. The whole display ran flawlessly throughout and the client was delighted.”

The regular stream of visitors were also able to see the lightweight, aluminium, five cylinder 408PS quattro Concept, R8 GT Spyder, A1 and RS 3 Sportback, while there was a viewing platform of the track.

Paul Middleton from Twofour Digital confirmed: “Once they had seen all the amazing Audi footage on the 12m screen visitors could not help but be wowed.”

And Hugh Fletcher, National Digital Manager for Audi UK, stated:  “We are always looking for new and innovative ways to showcase our cars and to improve our visitors’ experience at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.  “The screen not only added to the atmosphere inside the Audi pavilion, but also brought our fantastic brand and product range to life.”