ChromaPose at the London Aquarium
Digital Antics have installed their ChromaPose solution and associated hardware elements at the London Aquarium. Located in the County Hall building off Westminster Bridge next to the London Eye, the Aquarium is one of London’s premiere tourist attractions.
The installation has been featured in the industry press after Geny Caloisi from AV Magazine came down to have a look and discuss the implementation with Digital Antics’ Managing Director Quintin Willison.
Solution
The Aquarium already had an existing system in place for taking and processing green screen shots but it was clunky in process and cumbersome in use.
They approached us with a number of problems. We’ve implemented a number of features of our ChromaPose solution to solve these:
- Replaced the highly manual system of transferring photos from the photo point to the processing position at the tills via memory card with a high speed network link.
- Replaced the old ‘cloak room’ style tickets that customers were given at the photo point to take to the tills to collect their prints, with a receipt printer generating unique barcodes for each visitor’s batch of photos. These are then scanned at the tills to instantly recall the batch on screen for processing.
- Replaced the camera and flash kit at the photo point with studio grade flash guns and a fully tethered solution for the camera meaning that it is constantly powered and transfers photos directly to the local rack and then the remote tills without any manual operator intervention required.
We have replaced everything except their original dye sublimation photo printers. Our ChromaPose software was able to seamlessly support the incumbent printers with higher quality, more accurate results than the previous solution had been achieving.
Customer Experience
As per the Aquarium’s requirement to take photos in one location and then print them in another we developed a smooth workflow to ensure a friendly yet immersive experience for the customers:
- They wander around Zone 6 of the Aquarium (the Atlantic Corridor) and see the impressive green screen photography area.
- They approach the touch screen at the entrance where they can select a layout as well as enter their name. This touch screen is driven by the local computer which is running our ChromaSelect software.
They are beckoned on to the performance area (bespoke chromakey green rubber floor tiles and curtain). The photographer interacts with them ‘paparazzi style’ to goad them in to posing for an action shot. As each shot is taken we synchronise three separate flash guns to ensure the scene is perfectly lit (two Bowens studio flash units on the chromakey curtain and a camera mounted flash to light the subject). Each shot instantly transfers to the local computer and is displayed on a TFT screen which is visible to both the photographer and the customer so that they can judge whether they’re happy with the shot. The customer is allowed to take as many photos as they like in this manner until they are happy.- The photographer steps on to a foot switch which tells the local computer that this customer’s batch of photos is complete and prompts the system to print a receipt for them which includes a unique bar code to be scanned in later. The customer is advised that they should carry on their Aquarium tour and that they can optionally have their photo printed in Zone 12 of the Aquarium.
- While the customer carries on with their Aquarium tour, the local computer transfers their batch of photos to the till machines in a matter of seconds so that they’re ready to be recalled with a scan of the bar code later on.
- The customer arrives at Zone 12 after having (hopefully) safely stowed their bar coded receipt somewhere on their person!
One of the till operators (we have two tills in this installation running in parallel) scans the customer’s bar code in to our ChromaPose software and their photos appear on screen. Using the simple touch screen interface the operator selects one of the photos that the customer would like processed and is immediately taken to the compositing view. At this point the customer can be scaled and positioned. Optionally the chromakey settings can be tweaked (in case of subtle adjustments required to cater for those wearing green clothing). In addition the customer’s name and selected layout can be changed.- Once the customer is happy with the composite, it is then printed to one of the local printers depending on the medium selected. Currently the Aquarium supports key rings, fridge magnets, mouse mats and 6×8 framed prints however the system is fully configurable and plans are afoot for additional options in the future! An exchange of cash and job done.
These finished composites are optionally sent to the plasma screens around the Aquarium as teasers. The plasma screens are fed from a computer running in the Aquarium’s AV room running our ChromaDisplay software. We have run the video signal from this computer to the Sony plasma screens over a CAT5 cabling system at near HD resolution (1280×768 - native of the plasmas). Our use of DirectX and XNA technology in the ChromaDisplay software means that these displays are impactful and super-smooth in their animation of both static advertising stills as well as dynamic content generated by both the ChromaSelect and ChromaPose systems.