Vol. 57 No. 3 March 21, 2011 KONG VS. T-REX! UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD CREATES WORLD’S LARGEST 3D ATTRACTION. EXPLORERS WANTED NASA’S EXPLORATION SPACE IS A MODEL OF MODULARITY AND 14TH ANNUAL WORSHIP NONVERBAL PRESENTATION. CENTER AV SURVEY WORSHIP CENTER AV SURVEY 92 SECONDS ON SKULL ISLAND AV technology helps create King Kong 360 3-D at Universal Studios Hollywood. BY JUDITH RUBIN 34 Sound & Communications Fire on the Universal Studios Hollywood back lot in Spring 2008 wiped out several movie sets, ©2011 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. damaged the famous Back to the Future clock tower and destroyed the popular King Kong tram-tour attraction from the 1980s. It was de- cided not to build a new Kong animatronic but, rather, to update the popular attraction by replac- ing it with King Kong 360 3-D, an immersive multimedia experience. It opened July 1, 2010, and features a gigantic 3D projection system with two 187-foot-wide by 40-foot-high screens within a football-field-sized soundstage. Skull Island Passengers have their breath taken away in stereo when the tram pulls into Skull Island, the show doors shut and they are engulfed by the Peter Jackson-directed battle of Kong and the di- nosaurs. It rages for 92 seconds of consummate wraparound 3D imagery produced and animated by Weta Digital (www.wetafx.co.nz), Peter Jack- son’s New Zealand-based company recognized with five Academy Awards for digital effects, most recently for Avatar. On February 1, King Kong 360 3-D was honored with a VES Award from the Visual Effects Society for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project. Throughput is impressive and constant, at 160 seats per tram, with the show repeating over the course of the 10- to 16-hour Universal Stu- dios day. Thanks to a custom pneumatic motion base, their vehicle pitches, heaves and rolls as the beasts roar, punch, leap and lunge their way through battle in the jungle landscape. The show doors open and the tram emerges, its applauding passengers only a little worse for wear, slightly sprayed with Kongspittle. Tram ridership is up. Kong is back. The Details • King Kong 360 3-D features the world’s larg- est 3D projection installation ever produced. • Two seamless, compound curved screens, the equivalent of 16 movie theater screens, sur- If this King Kong were “real,” he’d be 30 round the Studio Tour tram. feet tall, 20 feet wide, 15 feet deep and weigh 6000 pounds. Instead, he’s projected Judith Rubin (www.judithrubin.blogspot.com) is a onto two screens, each measuring 187 feet wide by 40 feet high (the equivalent of 16 freelance writer and editor specializing in themed movie theater screens). attractions and entertainment technology. March 2011 35 • If the digital 3D King Kong could • The attraction was developed ini- the charge of Paul Cuoco, Technical leap off the screen, he would be 30 tially in the legendary airplane hangar Manager-AV & Lighting for Universal. feet tall, 20 feet wide, 15 feet deep and built by Howard Hughes for the con- “We had to figure out how on earth weigh 6000 pounds. struction of his giant Spruce Goose to deploy polarized, stereoscopic 3D • Whereas the average film projects airplane. to a linear audience where everybody at 24 frames per second, King Kong • When it came time to find a per- has to look off axis,” Cuoco said. His 360 3-D’s 16 ultra-high-definition pro- manent home for Kong, Universal team within Universal included Senior jectors display 60 frames per second, constructed the largest soundstage in Technical Manager/Senior AV Engi- creating an incredibly fluid sense of the studio’s history, with an area larger neer Brian McQuillian and Technical reality. than a football field. Coordinator Drew MacDonald. Univer- • Guests see and experience the sal’s Technical Director Bill Whitcomb equivalent amount of media—one tera- Technical A-Team oversaw design, integration and control byte of information—that is usually ren- Design, installation and control of the show action equipment: motion dered for one hour of a feature film. of sound and video systems were in bases, show doors and compressed air system. Among those Whitcomb worked closely with were Universal’s Greg Bryant (Ride System Specialist) More high resolution windows and David Lundberg (Technical Man- ager-Controls). at full frame rates. Other members of the Universal in-house team steering the project in- cluded Thierry Coup (SVP, Creative Studio), Jen Sauer (Creative Direc- tor), Mark Rhodes (Director of Media Production), Valerie Johnson-Redrow (Show Producer), Daryl Parker (Tech- nical Manager-Special Effects), John Dunne (Technical Manager-Set/Sce- nic), Greg Burnett (Facility Design Manager), Rae-Mi LeRoy (Project Coordinator) and Drew MacDonald (Technical Coordinator). Universal Creative VP Chip Larg- man noted, “The Weta Digital team, including Peter Jackson and Matt Ait- ken, along with Sassoon Film Design and Park Road Post, not only created a great new King Kong 3D movie, but Meet Fusion Catalyst from Jupiter Systems. they also played a significant role in The Fusion Catalyst family of display wall processors ushers in a new era of performance and the technical process and brought flexibility for collaborative visualization applications. Employing cutting edge, second generation PCI Express technology, Fusion Catalyst processors offer up to an astonishing 192 Gbps of considerable expertise to the job.” The bandwidth. That’s enough bandwidth to carry multiple ultra-high resolution video signals at technical specialists interacted with a full 60 frames per second, drive ultra-high resolution monitors at a full 32 bits per pixel, Universal’s facility design team and and support virtually any configuration requirement. the Weta content production team. M Dual-link DVI for resolutions up to 2560x1600 3D special venue cinema specialist M Up to 96 graphics outputs Peter Anderson, ASC, provided input M Up to 94 DVI, HD, or RGB inputs on system design as well as content M Up to 376 streaming video inputs design in the role of Stereoscopic Spe- M Up to two Intel Quad Core Xeon CPUs cialist/Projection Design Consultant. 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Rane Corporation • 10802 47th Ave. W. • Mukilteo, WA 98275 TEL 425-355-6000 • FAX 425-347-7757 • WEB www.rane.com/mlm65.html 20 L-Acoustics KIVA line-array cabinets, high/mid Equipment 10 L-Acoustics KILO line-array cabinets, low Projection 4 L-Acoustics SB28 dual 18" subwoofers 1 Brainstorm SR-26 time code generator/buffer 5 L-Acoustics LA4 4-channel amps 16 Christie Digital Roadie HD30+K 2K, 30K lumen projectors w/Twist 1 L-Acoustics LA8 4-channel amp (subwoofer) Image Warping Module, 1.25-1.45:1 high contrast lens, Isco 1 MediaMatrix N3 DSP matched 1.26x anamorphic lens 2 MediaMatrix NIO-AES 8-channel AES input cards 16 Custom anamorphic lens mounts, twisted to stretch image vertically 1 MediaMatrix NIO-8MLII 8-channel mic/line input card 8 Custom projection stands 1 MediaMatrix NIO-8o 8-channel output card 8 Custom polarizing filter holders 2 MediaMatrix CAB16o configurable audio bridges 16 Custom exhaust ducting manifolds 16 Meyer Sound MM-4XP self-powered speakers 16 Custom dual link DVI video cables 2 Meyer Sound MPS-488P power supplies 1 Dell Media Loading PC 2 Middle Atlantic equipment racks 16 DVS Pronto3 video servers, 2K, 60P, RGB 444 output, w/AES audio out 1 NETGEAR FS726T 24-port Ethernet switch 2 G-Tech GRAID3 Portable ESATA drives used for delivery and 1 RSS by Roland AR-200S