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Vista Systems' Spyder Joins Headliners at Live Earth Concert in Giants Stadium
Phoenix (August 13, 2007) -- Vista Systems’ Spyder was center stage -- though behind the scenes -- at the Giants Stadium venue for Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis which presented 24 hours of live music on every continent, July 7. Robb Wagner, founder of Stimulated, had used the Spyder on TV shows in the past and had been impressed by its capabilities. Wagner had been waiting for the right opportunity to showcase his companies’ own Spyder system, and Live Earth proved to be the perfect setting.
“Live Earth was the ideal place to debut our system,” says Wagner who was hired as the Screens Producer and Director for the event held at Giants Stadium in the Meadowland Sports and Entertainment Complex, East Rutherford, New Jersey. “When you have a large-format video landscape and want to project seamless images there are a few ways to do it. But Spyder is the most efficient.”
Wagner’s Burbank-based company, Stimulated, creates original content for screens at TV award shows, major TV music/event specials and concerts. It was charged with creating the content for the screens at Giants Stadium under the supervision of Live Earth event producer, Alex Coletti. Stimulated also organized and edited content shared by Live Earth producers in New Jersey, London, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and Hamburg, preparing a wealth of imagery ready for playback at a moments notice. Live Earth, presented by Kevin Wall and Al Gore, brought together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people demanding an end to the climate crisis.
Wagner deployed the Spyder to feed images to screens which displayed IMAG, graphics and messaging. A central LED strip measuring 6x70 feet was flanked by two side strips in 6x18-foot configurations, and two 18x27 foot IMAG screens, all fed by a combination of SD and HD Spyder outputs.
“Spyder was able to take in, mix, and output multiple formats simultaneously,” Wagner points out, “so we could select the most advantageous format for each source and destination. We were able to plan and execute a simultaneous SD and HD show instead of conforming to a common denominator like we usually do. That was great for me because it streamlined the process.”
When Wagner creates screen imagery wider than HD he typically has to “cut them up into smaller parts and use multiple sync rolls. Now, instead of preparing multiple HD or SD sync rolls we can generate a single HD source that is pixel-mapped to feed several screens at once, and Spyder does the rest.”
Stimulated provided the 16-layer HD/SDI 8-output Spyder for the control room, which was set up by XL Video at Giants Stadium. Stimulated also provided six Apple design and edit work-stations used to create content on site; Adobe After Effects and Apple’s Final Cut Pro were used for editing and compositing SD and HD video elements. Proque supplied a Flip Factory server which enabled the transfer of SD and HD content to their Profiles without going to tape. Feeds from 12 HD cameras came from All Mobile Video’s Titan truck along with world feeds and 6 channels of HD EVS.
“The Giants Stadium screen show had all the demands and elements of a live television broadcast. We were able to put on a great looking event and handle the changes as they came up. Everyone was very impressed by the performance of Spyder. ”
“Adding Spyder to our arsenal lets us have a greater hand in how our content is delivered to screens” he continues. “Having a Spyder in our own studio will allow us to program shows before we arrive onsite. That’s a unique and exciting capability; it’s all about making the best possible show in the amount of time we are given.”
Some of Stimulated’s other credits include: 2006 & 2007 VH1 Rock Honors, High School Musical: The Concert Tour, 2006 Spike Video Game Awards, The VH1 Big in 2006 Awards, 2006 American Music Awards, 58th Primetime Emmy Awards, 2006 Spike Scream Awards, 2006 Def Leppard Tour, 2005 MTV Video Music Awards , The 77th Annual Academy Awards.
About Vista Systems
Vista Systems was recently acquired by Christie, a global leader in visual solutions for business, entertainment and industry, to create a comprehensive source for imaging processing and projection solutions. The acquisition combines the power and flexibility of Vista's video switchers and real-time windowing and composition products with the power, performance and reliability of award-winning Christie projection systems. Vista Systems’ switchers have become the industry standard for live multiple-destination video and data mixed signal switching. For more information on Vista Systems, visit their Web site at www.vistasystems.net.