Longleat is an English stately home and the site of a Safari and Adventure Park. It was opened to the public in 1966 as the first drive-through safari park outside Africa.
Longleat’s ‘Festival of Light’ which started in 2014, features thousands of giant lanterns and was seen by more than 180,000 visitors last year.
As part of Longleat’s continued 50-year anniversary celebrations during 2016, LCI were briefed to design and create a new Christmas-themed show as a special highlight of the seasonal displays.
LCI’s Creative Director, Andrew Day, wrote the story about a boy who goes in search of a magic Christmas Tree and discovers the true meaning of Christmas. This became ‘The Magic Tree’ show. The projection content and the tree graphics were all designed and created by the LCI in-house team.
The show utilised a large-scale installation using the latest display technologies.
A twenty metre high ‘Christmas Tree’ made up of over 80,000 pixel mapped lights was designed by LCI. It is controlled via a Disguise Media Server. There are also seven Panasonic 8500 Lumen projectors in Vizbox projection enclosures to create the 3D video mapped projection onto the wall of the Longleat Stable building. Lasers and LED uplighting provide further enhancement. The entire show is controlled by Medialon Show Control, Disguise media servers, EnTech lighting control, RTI lasers and K-array audio.
The project was designed and overseen by Rob Paul, LCI’s Design Director. It provided a fantastic opportunity to create a unique attraction for Longleat. The use of a large scale LED Pixel Mapped Christmas Tree together with 3D projection mapping as a Christmas display had never been done before. It required the LCI team to combine every aspect of its creative and technical resources to deliver.
Concept Design – Show Production – Content & Audio Production – Technical Design – Pixel Mapping – Projection Mapping – Lighting – Laser – Special Effects – Show Control
