The content architecture is complex—scenes flow from one display to another, with scenes sometimes taking up the entire 12-screen array and then suddenly fragmenting in a dozen distinct ones. That effect “makes it more dynamic,” Oelberger says. “Physically, it’s morphing in a way.”
This was accomplished by using one BrightSign XD1030 networked interactive player for each display, synchronized using BrightSign’s software. This also allows the video wall to fully use all of the pixels in each display, resulting in certain scenes that have resolution approaching 8K.
The Planar screens had one other benefit—they’re fitted with ERO protective glass covering that keeps the displays “vandal-free,” in Oelberger’s words. “These days when people see a video screen they assume it’s interactive and they try to touch it,” he says.
In fact, as Apter adds, “Audiences are getting to the point where they’re almost becoming numb to plain-vanilla video walls. They’ve become ubiquitous. You need to do something to make them stand apart, as they did at the [National Geographic] museum.”
Bill Apter, senior consultant for special projects for Avitecture, discusses the unique content distribution strategy for the National Geographic Museum video wall solution.
Inside the Content Strategy
To edit the content, the museum hired Jamie Lee Godfrey, a former National Geographic staff video editor who now works as a freelancer.
Oelberger says that given the large amount of content it was an advantage to have someone who was already familiar with much of it do the edit. “That saved us a lot of time, Jamie was able to hit the ground running and bring a myriad of creative ideas to the table,” he says.
In order to edit in such unconventional format, Oelberger created a grid in Adobe After Effects that converted the physical layout to a pixel grid. Godfrey then began to experiment with using the grid to her advantage and created several iterations that were brought back to the museum for evaluation.
“The staggered compositions sometimes looked unnatural on a laptop screen but when we ran it through a projector in our auditorium at full size, the larger scale allowed the same effects to work wonderfully,” he explains.
