Digital Projection supports anniversary show in the heart of the Alps

In Tyrol / Austria lies the legendary sports town of Kitzbühel, which is famous for its world Hahnenkamm race, became famous and as a luxury resort with 1.16 million overnight stays, making it a true tourism hotspot.

On Sunday, June 6, 1271, the historic act took place in which Duke Ludwig II of Bavaria granted town rights and thus decisively shaped the development of Kitzbühel. On the occasion of the anniversary year “750 years of Kitzbühel” many ideas for celebrations, events, art and culture projects were collected. Even if a large part of the program items could not be implemented in times like these, some of the planned program items were implemented in the form of sustainable projects throughout the year.

One of them was a mapping show in which the history of the city was retold in an easily understandable way for all viewers. The oldest building in the city was chosen as the location for the projection. The 37m wide and 12m high facade – part of which was used for more than 750 years as a granary and external fortification of the city, today includes the Municipal Museum and the local authorities. Directly adjacent is the city park, which offers plenty of space for spectators and was opened in November for the duration of the Christmas season by the artists of MK Illumination. Thousands of precisely distributed lights and specially built light balls on the trees created a festive atmosphere appropriate to the occasion.

Horst Söllner, the technical project manager and managing director of FRAMEDROP MEDIA worked with the Digital Projection’s partner ETHA International GmbH for the first time in 2017 and thus projectors from Digital Projection, and has been impressed by the reliability and the extraordinary value for money, especially in the high-performance range for large-screen projections.

The biggest challenge for the implementation was the difficult situation of positioning the projectors. From the facade of the building to the direction of the park / viewing room, there was only 16m of unobstructed view and, in addition, several fire brigade access roads to the city.

Wide-angle projection with fixed 0.7 fixed lenses were required to overcome this issue which meant that the calculation had to be exact to ensure the facade of the building was filled. As a support for such an accurate calculation, the free lens calculator tool from Digital Projection was ideal for planning. The choice of projectors for this installation was clear, it had to be TITAN Lasers, with 37,000 lumens and a robust construction, 2 units were enough to achieve the required brightness on the old masonry facade. Reliability was also key as they had to be used outdoors and function error-free for 2 weeks.

The two TITANs were each installed in a tower, which was double-covered and waterproofed, with the front area covered by a pane of glass. After installing the projectors and an electric heater, as well as wireless humidity and temperature sensors for monitoring the projectors were installed and the projectors were not touched again until after the end of the event days. All adjustment work and remote-control commands ran smoothly via the free control app from Digital Projection, which greatly simplified the operation for the FRAMEDROP MEDIA team.

FRAMEDROP MEDIA uses a specially assembled Resolume server for the recording, as there were only 2 HD outputs 1x4k output per server, the main and backup servers were subsequently merged via an analogue way VIO4k and that Signal distributed via quad split output card as 1 HD SDI each to the two projectors. At the start of each show – which is three times a night on the hour started – a countdown appeared, towards the end the building lighting, the light art installations in the park and the street lamps were switched on via ART-NET Relay cards automatically deactivated, the technical conversions for this were developed by FRAMEDORP MEDIA. Sound designer Matthias Jakisic specifically Composed music and targeted sound effects could be connected via Focusrite DI cards to the perfectly functioning stereo effect L’Acoustics Kiva System and created an impressive acoustic background for the 13 minute show.

Due to Covid requirements visitor numbers were reduced so up to 400 guests were able to see the shows and the narration of the Kitzbühelers per evening and experience the history of the city in an impressive way.