Paint Me breakdown

Like everything, there is always an idea at the very beginning and this time was no exception.

stage_skecth

Rui Horta gave me a drawing with a set design to be created in 3D. Creating environments in 3D is always good for a first impression of the set, to detect possible flaws and to comunicate ideas with set designers, performers, musichians, technicians and with everyone involved.

This was the first iteration of the set:
Paint Me
Paint Me
Paint Me
Paint Me

After many discussions and iterations, the design became aesthetically more solid:
Paint Me
Paint Me

After solving all the issues with the set, was time to design the most efficient projection system. At first I made a couple of tests in the 3D environment:

Testing one projector for the fantasy zone, and another for the train cabinet:
Paint Me

Testing one projector for each single wall/floor, this turned out to be the most efficient way to do it:
Paint Me
Paint Me

The next step was to test the fantasy area (the right side of the stage) in a smaller scale, but this time in a real environment. I used PVC sheets and wood for this.

Paint Me

Each projector is pointing directly to each wall and floor. And because my digital camera is broken I only have photos taken from my crappy mobile. The photo below shows a bit of the Jitter software, at this point final adjustments on the code were being made:

Paint Me

Paint Me
This is a closeup of the program, it consists on a video player with the possibility of crossfading between each video with custom xfade time, slipt one entire video into 3 different videoplanes, where each videoplane can be adjusted accordingly the projection needs, perspective, width, height. Click on the photo if you want to see more screens.

We went to the stage with a full planning of the projection system, 6 projectors to be rigged on a single bar. One Big Thanks to the Culturgest amazing crew, this complex task was accomplished smoothly!!

Paint Me

Paint Me

Paint Me

Some stills of my visual work:
Paint Me

Paint Me

Paint Me

Paint Me

Paint Me

Paint Me

More photos here:
http://lab.guilhermemartins.net/2010/12/18/paint-me-insights/

Flowering Tree (from sketch to the real world)

This all started with Rui Horta’s idea of having a physical tree on stage that would support my visual projections. Rui Horta came up with a drawing and I quickly put it to 3D and sent to the great artist and set designer João Paulo Araújo who made this great master piece!

Flowering Tree - from a sketch to the real world

Flowering Tree - the tree

After the tree was finally built, I’ve made the first projection test, for this I created a program in Jitter, where I have a video running on the background, and on the foreground a .png transparent mask with the tree silhouette.

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Everything fitted perfectly! We were astonished!!

For the subtitles I’ve created another program in Jitter that could run videos on the background and on the foreground the subtitles could be displayed and crossfaded one next to each another. Another cool feature of this program is the ability to run videos at different speedrates, this was very useful because most of the videos were created in sync with the music, was a bit tricky to sync the video with the orchester and chorus but not impossible. Another great help came from the composer João Godinho who was by my side telling me when to swap to the next subtitle.

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Finally after one month of crazy hard-working days, and with a final week of non-stop working, troubleshooting, finetunning and problem solving everything worked so smoothed on the premiere, we were all thrilled and excited!!

Big thanks to André Almeira, André Sier and Sérgio Ferreira who are great tech advisors and always gave positive inputs.

I must also mention that the Gulbenkian crew was absolutely fantastic, without their help this epic task wouldn’t been achievable!

Click here if you want to see more photos.