Digital design agency INJOZI, approached Gearhouse Group with an unusual concept
for their Consol Glass campaign for GREY Advertising Johannesburg. The brief was
to create a projection surface using the client’s product, in this case glass bottles, to
be used as a backdrop for a variety of performance scenarios.

The campaign incorporated a video shoot as well as various activations around the
country, so the surface needed to be able display patterns and text effectively as
well as be assembled and dissembled quickly and safely for touring purposes.

A number of meetings between the INJOZI team and a combination of Gearhouse
expertise from the Audio Visual, Media, LED Screen and Set Building companies
within the Group resulted in an innovative solution.

Aaron Harvey, Operations Manager for Gearhouse SA’s Audio Visual department
worked closely with Richard Baker from LEDVision to devise a 3m wide x 2m high
“led-type’ bottle screen wall. This wall was constructed out of modular panels –
transparent acrylic “bricks’ with interlocking feet. Each “brick’ housed 60 bottles
lying on their sides – a total of 1500 bottles across the surface – with contingency
for small size variations in the bottles.

This type of project was a first for the team at Sets Drapes Screens (SDS).
Although they had previously built a wall-mounted display for Consol, the addition
of the acrylic surround came with its own challenges. Acrylic materials contract or
expand depending on the temperature and an imperative for this set-up was the
precise fit and exact line up of the bottle screen with an R6 LED screen located
directly behind it to achieve the desired effect.

Not only did the bottles need to precisely fit the bricks, and the bricks accurately fit
into each other, but the horizontal line-up had to be perfectly level as well. SDS
created a bespoke platform for the wall which can be levelled by means of
adjustable legs and all boxes are marked so that they fit together, in the same way,
each time they are assembled.

The INJOZI AV content was displayed on the LED screen behind the bottles and
Marcel Wijnberger of Gearhouse Splitbeam created a virtual mask for pixel mapping
which enabled each bottle to work as an individual “diode’ in the wall. The mask
directed the light through the tops of each individual bottle. The overall effect
creates images out of the individual bottle “lights’ on a surface that has an
additional depth and shine generated by the use of the glass medium – a coup for
the Consol brand.