The Cisco Pavilion experience was centred around a theatrette that presented a large, wide screen film, that had to work as the high point for the entire pavilion experience.
The brief for the film was broad and challenging: to show how technology will be a seamless part of all our lives in 2030. Our response was to create a fully dramatized film featuring characters in an extended family in a future Shanghai. We follow their individual stories through a typical day as the networked city around them eases them through a major storm crisis and into their happy family reunion.
Creative
One of the challenges of making this film is that the very high level drama required talented Chinese actors speaking in Cantonese, being filmed at a wide variety of different locations. The live action filming took place in Shanghai and was directed by a well-known Chinese director, Yang Qingsheng.
Another challenge was to visualize technology that doesn’t yet exist, and to integrate it convincingly into everyday settings and uses. We created an entire city management environment, centred around a visually complex 3D rendering of the city of Shanghai, which analyses the public and private machinations of the city. These elements required a team of skilled technicians from design to modelling to compositing.
The wide screen nature of the film added another level of complexity as the drama needed to work on multiple levels in a multi-screen format, as well as encompassing a film that made dynamic use of the entire 3:1 ratio of the screen.
Technical / Logistics
3240 x 1080 pixels on a curved screen with 5.1 surround sound
