Dr Blighty

Breathtaking projection for Nutkhut's Dr Blighty

For the finale of the 50th Anniversary Brighton Festival and as part of the current World War One Commemorations, performance company Nutkhut tasked QED with producing a spectacular video projection show onto Brighton's Royal Pavilion.

Dr Blighty remembers an unexpected episode in Brighton's history when the Royal Pavilion Estate became a military hospital for wounded Indian soldiers. Directed by Ajay Chhabra this 10-minute piece created by Novak with music by Ed Carter and Shri Shriram transformed the iconic Royal Pavilion as it had never been before. Attracting many thousands of people throughout the week, this stunning show truly set Brighton alight with beautiful imagery and sounds.

"It was a totally pioneering projection mapping project of the most intricate detail and quality" QED Director Paul Wigfield remarked "To enable Novak to design uninterrupted continuous material that could flow across all surfaces we needed to cover every feature with light from every possible angle, projecting both onto and behind all the columns as well as onto the onions and other architectural features. We knew it would require a large number of projectors but we didn't know quite how many until Dan Gray, QED's Head of Digital Media, pre-visualised the building and worked out the best configuration to achieve the coverage required. In the end twenty-two synchronised outputs were required to cover it from all viewing angles, with 500,000 lumens of projection power to enable the show to commence before nightfall."

The projection system comprised of six Christie Boxer 4K30 30,000 lumen projectors and sixteen Christie WU20K-J 20,000 lumen WUXGA projectors arranged in a mixture of landscape and portrait orientations, using a wide range of lenses from 0.72:1 to 3.89:1 ratios. The individual projector feeds were delivered via QED's fibre-optic multi-core system and monitored using two 16x16 DVI multi-viewers. To house the projectors and the control equipment QED developed, designed and manufactured a new flexible structure system, with a total of nine structures erected around the site. For the sound QED chose the d&b audiotechnik Y series PA rig.

"We simply had to do justice to the Royal Pavilion, to honour the WW1 commemorations and to celebrate 50 years of the Brighton Festival, so we put all our resources and skills behind it to make the experience something that Brighton will never forget."

Dr Blighty is a Nutkhut production co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Brighton Festival, and Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.
Supported by QED Productions, the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England, and by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

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