Kean Production Services Deploys AJA ColorBox to Deliver Consistent, Accurate Color Across In-venue Displays at Live Events
Events shine when in-venue displays showcase programming in the highest possible quality, which isn’t easy when projection and LED colors don’t match. The technologies emit light differently, introducing color discrepancies that can distract the audience, upset sponsors, and diminish overall production quality. While a fix can be eyeballed with standard color correction tools, it’s far from ideal, according to Chris Kean, founder of high resolution switcher solutions provider Kean Production Services. Collaborating with Red Rock Ops LLC Colorist Angel Banchs, he’s built a color management pipeline that ensures color appears highly accurate and dialed in across screens.
Whether handling a large-scale corporate event production, working with broadcasters, operating graphics systems, or providing equipment and stage management, Kean and his team deploy ColorBoxes regularly. Earlier this year, he used the devices on Keller Williams’ Family Reunion Conference, held in Atlanta, GA. The three-day event for real estate professionals took place at the Georgia World Congress Center. It included a keynote stage with a main LED wall and 24 projectors across main and delay positions.
“We only had a few days to get everything set up and rehearsal-ready, so the pressure was tremendous. The goal is always for the audience to leave happy with their experience and excited to return, and color feeds into that,” recalled Kean. “Since projection and LED colors never align, ColorBox gives us the calibration tools we need to deliver consistent, color-accurate content across displays. It replaces guesswork with informed decision-making.”
Precise color management
Ahead of arriving on-site for the Keller Williams event, Kean enlisted Banchs to profile the event space’s LED wall and 24 projectors and target everything to Rec. 709. Banchs measured the color with a Klein K-10A and a Colorimetry Research CR-250 spectroradiometer, using the CR-250 to profile the K-10A for each display type, and drove patterns from a networked Portrait Displays G1 generator running off a mobile DIT cart with the meters on top. This approach allowed Banchs the flexibility to move anywhere on the floor.
The production crew fed content into a Spyder X80 screen switcher, with outputs sent to the projectors and LED wall. LED correction lived in Brompton SX40 processors, with four ColorBoxes on the projection path: one on two house left projectors, one on two house right projectors, and one on each of the ten-projector delay chains – house left and house right.
“ColorBox is an elegant solution to a common challenge,” said Kean. “It’s small and portable, so it takes up little space and draws little power. You can easily integrate it on a hardware level, and with the software, you get all the dials and knobs you need to recreate video accurately.
Portrait Displays Calman read the measurements and generated the correction LUTs, which Banchs loaded into Pomfort’s Livegrade solution for live color grading and pushed them to the ColorBoxes on the projection path. The projectionists set center white on each unit, and the ColorBoxes carried the match across the different projector types. The calibrated ColorBoxes read under 2 dE2000 between the main projectors and the LED wall, and around 3 dE2000 on the delays, which were different units sitting in another area of the room.
“This workflow was key because a lot of the content for the displays was red, which is difficult to color-match. Projection primaries simply cannot reach LED red, so our ColorBox workflow helps us define a common target that both technologies can hit and maps them to it. Before using the ColorBox, it looked completely jarring,” Kean explained.
Once Kean put the ColorBoxes in line and Angel began his work, the team could send a calibrated signal and use internal patterns to match the projection screens. With Calman and Livegrade working together, Angel was able to walk the convention floor, call up any zone standing in front of the screen, and grade live to account for ambient lighting or a small request from the producers. “The tweaks weren’t big, but being able to make them in real time, in the room, is not something we have been able to do before using ColorBox,” added Kean.
Preserving color through conversion
The production team also used UDC-4K Mini-Converters on the project to convert two iMac UltraHD 4K, Rec. 709 SDR signals from HDMI to SDI for input to a large 4K router and the screen switcher for the live LED feeds. At the same time, they were able to use the Mini-Converters to down-convert the UltraHD signal to HD 1080p SDR for an online live stream and recording.
“The fact that we could handle both with one converter was so helpful,” Kean shared. “The UDC-4Ks have allowed us to focus more on color when moving HDMI computer signals over SDI. They’ve also given us so much flexibility, because they solve many different signal flow challenges with such accuracy. This was a massive project, with little room for error, which is why we went with AJA tools. We just need our tools to work, and we trust AJA to do that.”
Looking ahead
As demand for high-quality visuals continues to grow across the live event sector, Kean is starting to focus more on incorporating HDR into his widescreen event productions. He concluded, “HDR is an underserved area in our industry, largely because it’s complex. Now that we have tools like ColorBox to simplify HDR work, we want to show clients how we can improve the quality of their shows with it. We haven’t found another product that delivers the same color accuracy as our AJA gear, and the reliability is unmatched. Even in the most critical situations, I can count on AJA gear to take care of us, so whenever given the opportunity, I opt for AJA.”
Discover how ColorBox, UDC-4K, and other solutions from AJA can enhance production color management and conversion at www.aja.com/nav/products-color.
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