The Loud Movies crew was invited to demo during the end-of-day parties each night of the 2024 Production Summit – an honor and a challenge due to the sheer scale of the screen at Fuse TG that we would have to fill. Until now, we have always used a screen or projector for our demos, with most of our media existing at 1080p. The LED wall we used for the Summit is a 4 x 4k LED wall, designed for virtual production work, so we had to figure out a way to convert all of our existing films from 16:9 to 64:9 and from a 2D plane into a 3D oval shape. We did not have a lot of time to plan or execute this conversion, nor did we have any time to test the new content as we made it – we saw everything for the first time with everyone else during the first night’s performance!
We got a few pieces of critical information in order to pull this event off in just a couple of weeks: Fuse shared with us a 3D model of the screen and the truss above it, as well as what are called ‘playback rasters’ – 2D images that show where the pixels need to go for each of the 4 video feeds going into the LED processors for the LED wall. With these two pieces of information we were able to build an After Effects composition to generate 16k video for the wall, and we had a tool to visualize what it would look like in 3D. Thus began two sleepless weeks of work to design and execute Loud Movies on a unique and massive screen.
Chris did some initial designs for different ways that we could format our existing videos onto the wall, then Andy rapidly rolled out initial versions for each of the 22 films that would be played at the Production Summit. In the end, each film got a unique background treatment that tied into its theme or aesthetics, providing an animated backdrop that extended and reinforced the short film playing in a floating window on top.
While prepping for the Production Summit, we also did a demo at the Dome Fest West / SIGGRAPH Holiday Party, which introduced us to DJ Celeste, who we subsequently asked to come play with us at the Summit to help buy time to set up between the end of sessions and the start of our demo on Thursday night. Having two events in a week was both the most busy we have ever been, and a great test of how flexible and expandable the Loud Movies format actually is. Based on the success of both of these events we can say with great confidence that the answer is: very flexible, and very expandable. We look forward to taking this show to more venues in 2025, and hope that we are able to continue to expand the format as we go to maximize its potential in every location.
