One creative point in the final edit stands out: with museum’s endorsement, Godfrey was encouraged to use the bezels of the display as a design element. Furthermore, in certain scenes a number of the 12 screens are intentionally blacked out.
“You’d think that if you spent $100,000 on a video wall you’d want to use all the screens all of the time,” he says. “But by using the geometry and negative space to our advantage the overall effect more interesting and engaging.”
The installation is accompanied by an enveloping audio track, created by merging a subtle soundtrack with the live sound effects from the original footage.
The installation is slated to run through June 2014. The video wall will be taken down but Oelberger says the individual displays will be reconfigured and used again in other exhibits in the future.
“The great thing about video walls like this is that you can reconfigure them in a number of ways,” he points out, adding that for an upcoming marine life exhibit that can be used in portrait mode in a single row of twelve displays to create a shoreline effect. “What we’re increasingly looking for in AV technology is whatever can give us a stronger multimedia presence, ways that can link the brand in the museum, online, on television and everywhere else.”
Reporting by frequent CI and TechDecisions contributor Dan Daley is used throughout this article.
Bill Apter, senior consultant for special projects for Avitecture, discusses the decision to use Planar for the National Geographic Museum video wall solution.
