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Medialon Manager Pro and Medialon Lite go backstage at
the new "Star of the Future" attraction at Futuroscope
in Poitiers, France to help visitors test their acting
prowess and learn about visual effects. The Medialon
systems control interactive multimedia systems, which
enable visitors to enroll in an audition and travel
behind the scenes to eight different film sets to
discover the secrets of visual-effects wizardry.
Futuroscope is a theme park dedicated to cinema, AV
technologies and visual effects. The new "Star of the
Future" attraction allows visitors to take a look inside
a major film studio, feel the buzz on the film set,
discover the secrets behind the special effects, rub
shoulders with stars and take a film role. Visitors are
enrolled in an audition and their acting talents are put
to the test. Next, they board two-seater pods and travel
behind the scenes of 8 film sets to discover the
atmosphere and the technical trickery used. Thanks to
the humor and performance of the two actors at the
center of the attraction, "Star of the Future" is first
and foremost an interactive experience. Visitors will
understand the secret to creating images by first of all
absorbing them. They pass in front of the camera and
then behind the camera so that by the end they become
viewers of their own production.
The 15-minute ride covers a 200 meter course over three
floors. Visitors audition in casting rooms where an
MPEG-2 camera network encodes their acting attempts and
transfers them to a server. The audition files are
captured on alpha channels so five Only-View systems can
seamlessly insert them into pre-existing footage for a
proposed movie called "Savior of the Future". Visitors
get to see their auditions displayed on four giant
projection screens and one giant plasma screen where
they are integrated with numerous high-end visual
effects.
Futuroscope asked Paris-based Xlargo to find a method of
changing the contents of the attraction, which was
originally conceived and carried out by Patrick Besenval
in 1999. Patrick Besenval and Jean-Marc Besenval
designed a scenario that allows the integration of the
audience which become the "star" of the ride. Xlargo's
Michel Sauvage looked for technical solutions to
implement the scenario. He called on Ile-de-France-based
AV integration company ETC who proposed using Medialon
technology, which allowed them to encode the images of
visitors into a multi-layer film sequence, which would
follow the visitors as they moved through the
attraction.
ETC selected Medialon Manager to control the entire
installation. Two WIFI terminals allow a single laptop
to encode the video, visual effects, lighting and MPEG-2
camera output without any wires or cables between the
computer and the control room. This results in a real
time savings in Star of the Future, which spans three
floors.
"Thanks to Medialon Manager all the peripherals of
acquisition and diffusion (Camera IP and video server)
are easy to operate and quite flexible. Moreover the
excellent MXM file management allowed for a perfect
implementation of the management of the captured images.
To finish ("the icing on the cake"), the entire pavilion
has been programmed in record time (video, lighting &
sound) without being tied down, thanks to ethernet
network and WIFI piloting", commented ETC System
Engineer Patrick Dury. |
