CT Asia at the All China Games

CT Asia supplied and project managed the video elements of the exciting opening ceremony of the 11th National Games of the People’s Republic of China. The Games – often referred to as the “All China Games” – got underway on Friday 16th October at Jinan Olympic Sports Center Stadium in Shandong’s capital city of Jinan. The event was highlighted by a spectacular “Super Bowl” video display show in the center of the stadium that provided a magical experience for those in attendance.

The event’s preparation and execution proved to be on scale with that of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

CT were contracted by client Beijing Colour Lighting, one of China’s top lighting production and engineering companies, and the exclusive production supplier for the Games.

For the Games’ opening ceremony, one large coned cylindrical display screen – a “Super Bowl” – in the center of the Olympic Sports Center Stadium was the biggest highlight. The screen measured 50 meters in diameter, 13 meters in height and initially appeared as an illuminated bowl. During the ceremony, glowing peace doves descended into the stadium from its perimeter and dramatically lifted the bowl into the air. It was at this point that the bowl was revealed as a massive circular video display screen, completely dazzling onlookers.

CT implemented and managed the central video display, comprising of 48 Barco XLM HD30 projectors, utilized in pairs to provide 24 projected displays, blended together horizontally and vertically to produce a 360 degree seamless image. The projectors were all managed with Barco’s Projector Toolset software, communicating with the projectors over a data optical fibre network.

Content management and playback was from 24 channels of Dataton Watchout 4.0, running in sync with the show timecode track provided from the audio department. Watchout also provided the means to warp all images to achieve the correct perspective on the cone-like screen. All video and data distribution was via optical fibre.

The statistics are impressive: over 53 million pixels of video display, 600 amps 3 phase of video power, over 2,000m2 of projected video, 12 tonnes of video projectors and six terrabytes of playback content was utilized.

CT Asia worked with Beijing Colour for over a year on the project. The CT team was led on site by Technical Director, Alex Leinster. Says Leinster, “This was an exciting project to be involved in, presenting many challenges: for instance merely installing the projectors required a crane, and the projector calculations were complex. Our team were more than capable and we are very happy with the result.”

“The ‘Super Bowl’ screen was an outsized creative idea,” says Liu Guanlin, Executive Director for the Games. “It was designed to serve as the soul for entire opening ceremony. However, it was very difficult to build a bowl screen 50 meters in diameter. What’s more, the processing technique was especially complicated, and created a real challenge in material selection and video production, not to mention the need for powerful playback system. In the end, we made it happen. I’m proud to say that I’ve never seen such a vivid 360 degree video display that provided an engaging view for virtually every person in the stadium.”