BT Sales Conference
July 2007
At its annual UK sales conference, BT Global Services treated its sales team executives to an ‘out-of-this-world’ presentation. It wasn’t held on a space ship or a UFO, but inside a ‘virtual’ computer game. Held at the NEC in Birmingham, 1,800 BT sales executives gathered to celebrate their achievements.
Marketing agency, George P Johnson (GPJ), created the concept and developed the theme for the event. BT’s message was about change and being up for a challenge.
The auditorium needed a big stage and the content had to be seen from all areas of the room. To achieve this, an 18m-wide Musion ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ screen was used. Some presenters were beamed in and out of stage and others just walked on to the stage and interacted with larger-than-life graphics that floated around them. The content presented on stage was a mixture of live filming, recoded footage and 3D graphics.
The Musion technology works by using a projector at the top, with HD footage input, a reflective surface at the bottom and a transparent foil at 45 degrees in the middle, through which the images become almost holographic. Since the screen was so wide, GPJ and BT needed to have three, edge-blending projectors, which were tilted in to get the right angle for the image.
To fine tune the keystoning and blending, it used a three-channel Dataton Watchout Version 3 system, with its built-in image shaping and warping functionality, allowing for quick onsite fixes when dealing with less than optimal
projector placements.
Finding an 18m space and screen to rehearse the presentation before the event was not an easy task. GPJ’s technical director, Matt Brownfield, said that first it needed to get it right on paper. It then put the theory into practice with the actual projectors, films and images tested off site at Creative Technology’s warehouse. CT was in charge of setting up the structure for theMusion screen.
The presenters stood behind the Musion screen, interacting with the graphics and video and all presentations ran smoothly. Projection at the BT event was achieved using 3x Barco FLM R20+ machines, outputting 20,0000 lumens a piece, on the main Musion screen, while images were relayed to the back of the audience using two 10,000 lumen Panasonic PT-D10000 DLP projectors. A Vista Spyder 10input, six output controller was used to do the screen mix and three Dataton Watchout display channels. Live images came from a PPU with a Grass Valley HD SDI 2 mixer
