The Brief
Following the success and popularity of 3D (deployed by Inition) at MPH 05 and 06, MPH’07 producer Rowland French approached Inition for a new 3D extravaganza: ‘The GATSO Dragon’. MPH (now Top Gear Live) is a unique concept including a live theatrical car show, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
Inition were briefed to produce a spectacular in-your-face 3D short film to be choreographed with on-stage action of The Stig (the mystery test driver) doing battle with the 3D Dragon.
Solution
Concept– “The year is 2050, and the Government has gone mad. A small resistance of petrol heads do their best to fight Baby Blair’s army wherever they can. Leader of the resistance is The Stig; top of the Government’s Most Wanted, he roams like a road warrior battling traffic wardens and mobile speed cameras where he can. In response to his success, the Government has designed a new type of mobile speed camera – something more frightening and devious than anything seen before: GATSO Dragon”.
Inition’s concept artists got to work for various treatments of the GATSO Dragon developing ideas and direction:
The Show– Inition provided a 3DVidBoxHD playback server, high-transmission polarising filters, a 40-feet-wide silver screen and over 100,000 pairs of 3D glasses for the show. Inition technicians supervised the 3D installation at the show and operated the playback for all 20 shows (to date).
Results
The 3D sequence ran flawlessly in every show.
We asked the client for some feedback on the MPH project and a quote for the story….
“Inition are brilliant; if you want the best 3D in the UK, you’d be mad to use anyone else”, said Rowland French, Producer of MPH 07.
Rowland went on to say: “Often the greatest working disappointments as a producer are when the reality of something bears little or no relation to what you had in your head. It’s easy to design giant fighting koala bears in your mind, but who is going to make them?
“The same sense of foreboding haunted me when I came up with the idea of making a giant 3D dragon to fight The Stig, live in the MPH arena. Not complex enough already, the dragon had to be from the future, with armaments to deploy in the scrap, armour to be blown off – and most importantly had to have enough character in its face and movement to almost be a ‘fourth presenter’.
“Inition were as excited as me about the idea, and organised plenty of artist meetings where we could discuss the dragons look. Once they had my barmy outline, they then started supplying their own drawings, and slowly the dragon in my head came to life on paper. Their seemingly limitless patience was never tested by my constant ‘eyes need to be further apart’ and ‘the wings should beat slower’ redesigns.
“When I finally sat down in their subterranean lair in East London, and watched the exact dragon from the middle of my head bob and flap in 3D in front of me, I was speechless. The dragon was all I could have hoped for, its movements were totally animalistic, its look perfectly well-worn futuristic. Jump to the first performance in Earls Court and The Stig tears around evading rockets and razor edged parking tickets, the audience ducking the stereo moments and jumping as the rockets cue with huge pyrotechnics on the floor. Inition had graced me with a beautiful baby dragon, and I was as proud a father as you could imagine.”