Moda Center

MODA CENTER

Portland, USA

Images: disguise

re-game NBA shows are often extravagant,

P eye-catching displays, designed to capture the attention of the crowd and get them ready for the game - and, at the Moda Center, it’s no different. The venue - home to NBA side, Portland Trail Blazers - has a capacity of 19,393 for basketball, though that can be increased to 20,796 with standing room. Each fan there for the NBA Playoffs was wowed by the pre-game show, which was delivered with the support of disguise and its 4x4pro media servers. Along with MeyerPro, a broadcast and audiovisual specialist that worked as the Trail Blazer’s production partner, the disguise system showcased its flexibility and utility to deliver fan content for all types of national sporting events, delivering dynamic, superhero projections. Luke Buchanan, Lead Technician at MeyerPro, who served as disguise Systems Designer and Operator on the project

takes up the story: “The Trail Blazers’ creative services and game entertainment staff were looking for a fresh pre-game intro look, with a long-held belief that the experience should have the same impact from the floor to the 300 [tier of seats] level. “Many of the creative options available in an NBA pregame environment did not pass that test, so Craig Winslow of Craig Winslow Studio and the Trail Blazers’, Billie Olson conceptualised a 360º projection cylinder that would fly in from the scoreboard and disappear just as fast as it entered. “A kabuki curtain release system was used to reveal the cylinder from its position tucked away below the scoreboard. Projectors from each corner illuminated the canvas for a seamless 360º video intro including highlights from the Trail Blazers’ season. “The concept was to tell a story of the team and fans coming together aptly set to Junkie XL’s remix of The Beatles’ song, ‘Come Together’. We also wanted to make

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sure the 35ft tall screen made the players larger than life, in superhero form, as they walked out during intros.” As the startling line ups weren’t released until shortly before the game, Luke had to have a list of all possible starting players on his timeline. Once the introductions had finished, the fabric was released from the scoreboard above the court, dissipating down to the floor with the projection following the screen position, dropping and going dark.

“The system did an outstanding job of keeping up with our demands and being part of our workflow from conceptualisation to show.”

Luke Buchanan

“The projector position and blend projection features on the cylinder meant that our warping and blending was 90% there before the projectors were even hung. This was important because of the extremely narrow window we had to execute this job,” added Luke. The design for the pre-game show had to take the quick turnaround from show to tip-off into consideration. The NBA requires any design used to be fully mobile and clear of the court so the game can be started instantly. “With this narrow window to accomplish a look and tell a story, we had to use a material that could appear from nowhere, and get out of the way just as fast with the help

of a team of stagehands on the ground,” explained Luke. “Each drop of the cylinder screen took roughly one hour to reset and, with the screen down, all court operations had to be at a standstill since the screen floats onto the floor at half court. This gave us only a few moments in each cycle to walk the arena and touch up the warp and blend. I was able to take a disguise Designer license out wirelessly on a laptop to apply those changes from different seating sections.” A disguise 4x4pro is deployed as the master system, with a second one as an understudy, providing a robust solution that delivers stability, flexibility and functionality. Luke explained the benefits of the system in further detail: “Once we loaded the Moda Center in as a venue, we were able to host flyovers and offer proof of concept for the jobThis allowed us to look at sight lines and consider where on the canvas content should be rendered and get all of the snapshots, video, flyovers and even VR walkthroughs needed to make sure this concept would deliver.” The Designer license enabled Luke to “previs without servers”, while the Advanced Projector Toolkit “helped us survey our projector locations, verify lensing and handle our overlaps, blending and warping with ease.” There was plenty of praise for disguise’s HAP playback and streamlined UV mapping, too. “The system did an outstanding job of keeping up with our demands and being part of our workflow from conceptualisation to show,” said Luke. Alongside Luke, the team included MeyerPro, which was the Trail Blazers’ production partner for the pre-game show with Production Manager, Stephen Vandervort, and Projectionist Bill Bassett. The Trail Blazers’ Koji Matsumoto did the motion design with Dane Sayer handling the video edit and Todd Bosma acting as Game Operations Director. ACMEPDX did the fabrication.

INSTALLER: MeyerPro | BRANDS: disguise | WEBSITES: www.meyerproinc.com, www.disguise.one

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