March 2019 saw one of our most exciting projects to date – projection mapping onto the running track at Olympic Park for Adidas. We were approached by creative agency The Midnight Club to redefine the experience of track running. Event Projection’s task was to project and map content onto 50 metres of running track in the Olympic Park with the iconic Olympic Stadium as a backdrop.
Scale and distance were the technical challenges for this project. In an ideal situation, we would suspend the projectors directly above the track itself, on goalpost structures. However this would have resulted in movement and swaying, creating distortions with the blending effect, thus destroying the illusion.
Our solution was to construct three 8-metre-high projection towers containing two stacked 30K projectors in each. We seamlessly blended and mapped these to the dimensions of the running track. Another challenge we faces was with the tower construction, with loose ground and sand underfoot, plus a very short timeline for construction. We had completed the projection mapping process overnight prior to the event using our Avolites Ai Media Servers. (As well as lots of strong coffee and pure determination.)
Having beaten all the odds, managed traffic and multiple teams onsite, we were able to give the guests their chance to redefine their running styles with logos, graphics and a pace marker projected onto the track itself. Runners were challenged to beat their personal bests with endurance running, team relays and treated to a 50m wide video showcasing the new Ultraboost trainer and Adidas branding.
Timing was everything for this event. Guests were left speechless as the floodlights around the running track were dramatically switched off. Meanwhile the giant section of the Olympic Park track illuminated with our projection mapping. We controlled this remotely from our base in the central tower. Timings for each section of content effortlessly tailored to match the runners’ speed and endurance.
