Giant 60-Foot Projections In Four Cities Help Promote Gaming-Inspired TV Series
April 20, 2022 by Dave Haynes
I sometimes feel like some annoying, overly-cynical guy at the back of a meeting room quietly muttering, “That’s not a hologram.”
But on behalf of all the little companies and labs out there working on light field displays and other three-dimensional display tech, that really does meet the definition of displays that have volume and are viewable from any angle, I will note this marketing effort for the gaming-inspired TV series Halo is not a hologram. It’s an impressively large public projection on a silver-infused gauze curtain.
The streaming service Paramount+ commissioned a one-day public event in four cities around the world on Sunday that featured what, at 60 feet, was billed as the world’s tallest hologram. The projection was of a show character (I guess, never seen it and I’m old) called Master Chief: Spartan 117.
The “Halogram” set-up was deployed at landmark locations in Toronto, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Sydney, using at each site more than 24 tons of metal trussing and 126 square metres of what’s called holographic gauze. So it’s really just a two-dimensional screen creating an illusion.
I continue to have mixed feelings about the misappropriation of terms like hologram. I get the argument that for marketing purposes, a short and sweet term that the general public can readily grasp is necessary. Selling something is easier using one semi-familiar word than 30 or 300 less familiar technical terms. On the other hand, saying something is an airplane when it’s really a kite seems, well, a bit off.
In this case, the Godzilla-scale projection is impressive enough without needing to call it something it’s really not.
The Master Chief visual was produced for Paramount+ by Minute Media, a global technology and content publisher, in partnership with Kaleida, and the media agency Wavemaker.
Do we know who’s projection it is?
Sorry, the material I had did not say.
I agree Dave, it is misappropriation, but if enough of us influential people moan and complain in the media there is a chance of sanity. Look at the way the stupid term ‘direct view LED ‘ has retracted since some of us have shouted!