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Student Life Ski: Behind the scenes

Posted on September 6th, 2010 by Nick Rivero

Earlier this year, Luke and I had the chance to head out to Boone, NC to do video for Student Life’s annual Ski event at Appalachian State’s campus.

We were in charge of the entire 5 screen video rig: from load in, through the show, to load out.

So here’s the run down of what made up the rig:

4 – 7′x12′, 16×9 DaLite Fast Fold RP screens, all hung vertically.

1 – 10′x17′, 16×9 DaLite Truss Deluxe RP screen, hung horizontally

4 – Panasonic PT-DW5300, 5500 lu projectors

2 – Panasonic PT-DW7000, 6000 lu projectors

4 – Apple Mac Mini’s, running Mac OS 10.5.8 & Renewed Vision’s ProVideo Player Node software, v1.2.7

2 – Apple Mac Pro’s, 8 cores, running Mac OS 10.5.8 – 1x Running ProVideo Player Master software, 1x Running ProPresenter

3 – Grass Valley Indigo video mixers

4 – AJA SDI to DVI converters

14 – 6′ Spansets for suspending the screens from house batons

4 – 9′ Spansets for suspending screens from house batons

10 – 1 Ton schakels for rigging spansets

1 – Genie lift for lifting center projector

6 – 10′ sticks of 12″ TomCat truss for mounting projector vertically

4 – sets of Chief projector mounts

While it may look like a lot of gear, I always base my rig designs off of what gear exists in their (Student Life’s) inventory versus having to purchase or rent any outside pieces. Thats something I would encourage everyone to take a look at before you go out and rent any gear… What do you already have that you can use or reuse?

The reason I used Renewed Vision’s ProVideo Player is because of it’s Advanced Display Mapping feature which allowed us to seamlessly map content across all 5 screens.

(If you’re interested in hearing more about ProPresenter or ProVideo Player, shoot an email over to info@orangethreadmedia.com).

Here’s a diagram as to how the video rig works:

Here’s what the video rig looked like all setup:

As you can tell in that last picture, we found ourselves using a lot of still colors. We quickly realized that with this large of a video canvas, we very easily could be distracting.

So we found ourselves partnering with the lighting guys to utilize the screens and video to convey mood and energy through a lot of solid colors. This way we are still able to use visuals to influence the energy and mood of the room to create an environment of worship to our creator. So often we think that “visuals” have to be motion, but in reality, they really don’t. So often we get caught in the fact that video can’t use boring solid colors, but in reality they are actually extremely powerful.

Nick Rivero is a genius when it comes to live event camera directing and designing video rigs. As a crucial part of the Orange Thread Team, Nick’s skills in video editing, custom graphics, technical knowledge and video system design/implementation bring a whole new level of quality to each of our projects. Make sure you go and follow Nick on twitter.

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