Easy-to-deploy PHOTON servers provide the media backbone for the high-energy Dragon Show in Zhuhai, China.
At the Chimelong Theatre, a fantastical building set at the heart of the expansive Chimelong amusement park complex in Zhuhai, China, star-crossed lovers embark on a frenetic journey through moonlight nights, lush forest, and a menacing desert, to at last reunite in an exuberant finale.
With virtual scenography at the core of the fantasy worlds inhabited by dancers, acrobats, dirt bike daredevils, and more, multimedia coordination was essential. We joined the project at the request of content creators Drop The Spoon.
To get the most out of the combination of projectors and an LED screen spanning the entire width of the theater, they needed to know that their media server system for Dragon Show would be reliable and robust. And with opening day fast approaching, they knew they needed PHOTON to deliver the results without fail.
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Meeting the highest technical standards under rigorous time constraints is second nature to our dedicated teams. For this show, Montreal-based PHOTON Specialist Tommy Lahitte relocated to Zhuhai to eat, sleep, and breathe Dragon Show for five intensive weeks. “It was so satisfying to handle a project from A to Z, from site acceptance testing, programming, and calibration all the way through training the show operators,” he recalled with a smile.
We put PHOTON’s real-time capabilities to use from the outset, producing a high-quality projection study that allowed Chinese AV integrator ZMT to rapidly determine the optimal position for the 14 Barco UDX-W32 projectors that transformed the stage into verdant forest and cursed sand dunes.
Thanks to the calibration features built into our ALBION tracking and show control servers, single-view calibration was executed in an hour using eight Constellation Calibration Lines, seven Calibration Stands and nine stage COPERNICS. With time allotted for three tests, getting everything just right on the first try gave the Chimelong crew more time to perfect automated stage elements like their six lifts.
The final step to get Dragon Show ready for its premier was training the show operators. In just a few days, we had the local team up and running independently on the 2 ALBION tracking and show control servers and the 6 PHOTON video servers.
“Without question, the stability and reliability of our system and how easy it is to use is what made it all possible.” – Tommy Lahitte, PHOTON Specialist
Video Content Designer
Patrick Neys (Drop the Spoon)
Integrator
ZMT
Programmer
Tommy Lahitte (VYV)