Appointed by Jack Morton Worldwide, large format projection specialists E\T\C UK projected 40 giant portrait images depicting Dreams of London onto the Shell Tower for London's New Year's Eve celebrations.
The spectacular public event, organized by the Mayor of London and Visit London, included pyrotechnics in addition to the projections. The result was a visual extravaganza designed to capture the spirit of London at the start of 2007.
The festivities took place along the Thames, encompassing the South Bank between Jubilee and Westminster Bridges, including iconic landmarks like the London Eye and Big Ben. It was enjoyed live by 200,000 people on the streets, and broadcast live on BBC 1 to several million viewers.
The eye-catching black and white photographs by Mark Livemore illustrate the dreams and aspirations of selected pupils from the Johanna Primary School in Lambeth and were projected on the 352’ high Shell Tower before the 60 second countdown to the midnight show began.
E\T\C's Ross Ashton designed the projection format, covering the full surface of the building with eight PIGI 6Kw projectors to produce extremely bright images. The projectors were placed nearly 500’ away on the edge of Jubilee Gardens, in a curtain-sider truck in a four-top/four-bottom arrangement, complete with 40cm lenses. Each machine produced a 164’ x 164’ image overlaid for optimum brightness.
Jack Morton’s creative director, Dan Colborne, coordinated artwork for the slides while E\T\C undertook all the camera obscura and perspective correction required to fit the images to the building.
The load-in took place on December 28th, followed by overnight programming and rehearsal sessions before the show. Karen Monid operated the show using a PIGI OnlyCue system. E\T\C UK's chief engineer was Andy Murrell; all the project's logistics were handled by Paul Highfield; with load-in technicians Michael Barry and Simon Doddimead.
E\T\C's Ross Ashton comments, "It was a great privilege to be working with Jack Morton on this event. Everyone combined imaginative energies, talents, and enthusiasm to create a unique work for a special moment in time, and the images looked particularly stunning on the building."