The Stage

Screen in the Square

Published Monday 29 October 2007 at 12:00

Christie’s HD18K projectors made their UK debut recently, displaying a digitally remastered Indian classic film to an audience in Trafalgar Square at a special screening organised by Film London in conjunction with the BFI, the Mayor’s Office, the Barbican, UK Film Council and Cambridge Film Festival.

Festival director Tony Jones was determined that the quality of the projection onto the 50ft x 25ft giant inflatable screen should be as good as possible, so the film was digitally remastered by the BFI National Archive onto HD-CAM and the task of projecting it given to QED Productions. QED had worked in what it calls the “unforgiving environment of Trafalgar Square” many times before. Part of the difficulty was that although the show commenced in dusk conditions at 9pm, the environment was enveloped in light from the surrounding buildings.

For this particular project, two HD18K projectors were double-stacked and fed from two synchronised Sony J-H3 HD-CAM players. The event formed part of the Mayor of London’s India Now celebrations, and the 75-minute long movie was accompanied by a specially written score by musician, producer and composer Nitin Sawhney, who also conducted its live performance by the London Symphony Orchestra.