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Event Technologists: FIX8Group LSi talks to Stockport-based FIX8Group, taking a 3D look at the creativity behind one of the most exciting visual teams the UK has to offer . . .
UK - “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away,” states FIX8Group’s website, quoting the French writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It’s a motto that FIX8Group’s founder and MD Neil Trenell firmly applies to all of his company’s projects.
They certainly do: when smouldering showman Michael Bublé was chosen to launch Birmingham’s new Barclaycard Arena (formerly the NIA), which had just received a £26 million investment, moving image agency Steam Motion and Sound approached Trenell to fix them up with some FIX8 magic for the special night, which was also being filmed for DVD.
“We love the creative challenges that drive the live event horizon higher,” says Trenell. “Creativity, content management and system designs operate best when they operate seamlessly together to provide complete solutions to complex live environments.”
“Director of Photography Brett Turnbull asked us to act as lighting programmers for all the extra fixtures being brought in for the shoot and to integrate them into the existing show,” Trenell continues. “We worked closely with a top class crew from PRG to load in all the lighting for the shoot and then with the tour crew to patch the two control systems together. We talked with Michael’s LD Kurt Wagner to ensure that above all else, his vision for what the show should be was not compromised by the addition of all the TV lighting and cameras.
For FIX8 it all started around five years ago. Trenell, who is a big fan of Richard Branson’s entrepreneurial spirit and the Virgin Group brand, launched FIX8Group with a view to offering a multitude of services to a hungry corporate, rock ‘n’ roll, TV and special event world. “People are fixated upon successful project delivery,” he says. “So are we. It seemed to fit.” Above:
Right, from top: Filipe Martins, Fraser Walker and Paul Williams.
Half a decade on and FIX8Group offers Projection and LED Mapping, 3D Interactive Design, 360º Widescreen, Immersive Presentations, Production, Lighting and Video Design, Programming, Operation and Content Creation to events as diverse as V Festival, an X Box projection mapping promo, and Eurovision.
Middle, top: Line-up of the polygons in progress using RegionMapper from Hippotizer V3 - for TRT Cocuk in Turkey.
At FIX8Group’s core is a team of talent. Working alongside Trenell, to mention a few, are John Montague, Nick Charalampidis, Fraser Walker, Filipe Martins, Richard Kenyon and Paul Williams.
Middle, bottom: One of the delegate countries in action during the TRT Cocuk show.
“We’re basically the centre where these complex live environments and detailed productions come to life,” explains Trenell.
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Left, from top: MD Neil Trenell; John Montague; Video project manager Nick Charalampidis.
24 LSi - September 2015
“We utilised the new cloning wizard on the MA2 to quickly and precisely map individual parameters from specific tour fixtures to our own TV units, as requested by Kurt, as the best way to ensure a smooth integration. With a full camera dress rehearsal that night, time was tight to get all the programming done, so by cloning all the fixtures to existing touring ones and creating some new positions and focuses for them we were able to have something close to what the actual show would look like in record time. Then it was just a matter of going through and tweaking colours so that everything looked great on stage as well as on camera. Michael put on a great show on a stage full of custom gags, all designed and built by TAIT. Kurt had produced a beautifully crafted light show that we were privileged to help capture on film.”
“There were 33 countries each performing a three-minute dance routine; for each we had different content playing synchronised across all screen areas, creating a magnificent, giant picture,” explains FIX8’s video project manager Nick Charalampidis. “We were tasked with delivering the content across multiple machines, and ensuring continuity of playback on all servers at all times. The whole floor was also being projected, creating a giant canvas picture for every act of the show.” Charalampidis worked closely with the creative director Qmars Kalami from the early stages, looking after all the UV mapping and camera render positions for the polygons as well as the floor and the Gates. FIX8 managed a huge amount of video control gear, providing the video control servers and also looking after Phantom Engineering’s own equipment onsite. Kit included 16 x Hippotizer HD units and two Lightware 16x16 Matrix (all from FIX8), plus a GrandMA2 Light with two MA Lighting NPUs, eight Panasonic 21K projectors and a single 18K Christie Roadster (all provided by Phantom Engineering). FIX8 uses the tagline, ‘Create and innovate with technology’ - i.e. use technology to be creative, but don’t let technology be the creative driver. “It’s embracing technology and pushing it to its limit,” says Trenell. “We certainly use kit to its potential and by doing that we learn both good and bad things. The company has grown alongside technology and I guess because of our relative youthfulness or mental age of around two (!) we like playing with new equipment. And when I say playing, it’s not just realising what the technology can do, it’s using it in a way that people don’t think it ‘should’ be used, trying to find a new application for it. “Just because someone wants to do it with one screen doesn’t mean you can’t do it with 100; people use 1000 moving lights, let’s use 1000 projector outputs, why not? Dare to be different! That’s a phrase I use rather a lot . . . Let’s deviate . . . what we actually do is have fun and try to push our clients to do exciting things or just achieve something different.” As a result, the team reports back to the brands it predominantly uses, including MA and Green Hippo, with a wish list of additional features. And they also ‘pimp’ their existing kit to power the scale of shows and client requirements. That, of course, requires lots of testing, product research and experimentation with multiple technologies to be able to get the best out of the latest hardware and software technology. “An example of this would be our purchase of some of the first Dual Link V4 Green Hippo Boreal Media Servers,” explains Trenell. “We then customised the unit to be able to capture five DVI feeds of 1920x1200 @ 60FPS as well as two HDSDI feeds for live capture. The purpose of this
was that the end build was a high spec Gaming Engine PC, using Unity software, creating a Large Virtual Space with an overall canvas of 8800x1200 pixels. Five Virtual Projectors were rendering content and graphics in real time and were being captured into the Boreal servers with a consistent minimum frame latency of 1.5 frames. All frames were locked and synchronised together, keeping the performance at 60FPS. “We want to do things better - John and I are OCD beyond belief and don’t like wasting time, so if we can find a quicker way of doing something then we’ll do it. Sometimes, this becomes a sort of industry practice, an industry standard.”
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Perhaps surprisingly for a man leading a boundary-pushing team, Trenell has no formal qualifications in the industry. “The only way I’ve learned what I do is via questioning and working with others, learning fast and thinking differently,” he says. Thankful for the support the industry has given him, Trenell and his team are keen to give back. “If someone wants work experience then I say ‘share your skill set and we’ll share ours’. If someone can do something 1% better than me and I enable that to happen a) the industry grows and b) you are enabling creativity, not hindering it . . . don’t be afraid of it because it’s those people that you have to liberate and allow them to do what they want to do. In 10 years time they will be the boss, the person giving you the projects, the owners of the companies.” One of the organisations receiving support from FIX8Group is Yorkshire-based live events training outfit the Backstage Academy, which the company has supported for several years with training, equipment on events and talks to the students. “FIX8 takes an active role in developing the next generation of technicians, designers and production crew,” says John Montague. “In conjunction with Backstage Academy we provide technical training and work experience for young technicians - bringing them into cutting-edge technical systems as early as we can in order to grow their knowledge and expertise. In fact we currently have two d3 servers with the Academy at the Prague Quadrennial Expo.”
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Next up for the team is another ‘activation experience’ at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September and continuing a range of projects in collaboration with Mercedes Formula 1 after the summer break. And as for the future, well: “It’s world domination, one pixel at a time!” Trenell jokes. “But seriously, growing FIX8Group is purely organic. Our vision is to be globally recognised as leading creative users of technology in the industry. “However, we want to stay niche; if we grow too big we become a machine. Then it becomes about feeding the machine and you start taking jobs you don’t necessarily want to do. We are here to run a business but also to have fun. It’s about enjoyment and producing good, creative, interesting work and not just doing. We want to be in control of it - not it be in control of us.”
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Elsewhere in the world, FIX8 was recently approached by Phantom Event Engineering to look after all the video elements for a live broadcast of a kids show by TRT Cocuk in Turkey. FIX8 was challenged with projecting huge amounts of content onto 250 polygons in a 3D environment. These were positioned on all sides of a basketball arena, requiring individual mapping on each polygon.
> www.fix8group.com LSi - September 2015
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