• Live Events & Streaming

  Mixing LED screens and Projection screens on stage?

  Posted by Kevin Reiner on September 10, 2010 at 8:33 pm

  Hope someone can give me some advice, as this is not my speciality.

  I am working with an artist to design 2 hours worth of animations for a live event that is being performed in a theater. The animations I have under complete control, but the theater has thrown us for a bit of a loop in regards to projection.

  We had planned on 3 screens, 2 being projected from the back of house, and the 3rd being rear projected. Now they are saying the rear projection won’t work due to lack of space, and they want to use an LED screen instead.

  I know LED has come along way, but this worries both the artist and myself. Here are a couple of our concerns.

  1. Will it be difficult to make the 3 screens look consistent? My gut says that a light emitting source and a light reflecting source could never be perfectly consistent.

  2. Would LED be really bright? We have other lighting elements and actors on stage, so we would be scared that the LED screen would blow them out.

  Thanks for any insight. I wish I had more details to share.

  -Kevin

  System Setup (for a more detailed list, see my profile)

  HARDWARE
  Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  9GB Memory
  Two 16x SuperDrives
  Dual-channel 2Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
  Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
  ATI Radeon X1900 XT Graphics Card
  AJA Kona LHe SD/HD capture card
  Apple Xserve Raid 5.6TB

  SOFTWARE
  Mac OS X 10.4.11
  Final Cut Pro Studio 2
  After Effects CS3
  Photoshop CS3
  Illustrator CS3
  Boris Continuum 5
  Sapphire Plug Ins
  Roxio Toast
  Digital Anarchy Anarchist Suite
  ParticleIllusion 3.0
  Trapcode
  Zaxwerks

  Walter Soyka replied 15 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Soyka

  September 16, 2010 at 6:37 pm

  I helped design an event last year with mixed LED walls and projection screens. Our on-site LED programmer was able to adjust the LED wall to remarkable consistency with projection. We occasionally spread content across both systems, but for the most part, we treated the LED walls differently as an intentional design choice. Both approaches worked well.

  One other technical issue to be aware of is resolution — your projection systems and LED walls may have different resolutions and physical pixel sizes, so you’d need to be aware of this upfront.

  Walter Soyka
  Principal & Designer at Keen Live
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
  Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up