Talking Stick Resort Anamorphic content experience.

Our client was a custom screen specialist, called OpenEye Global, who was approached by the team at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale Arizona USA about transforming their lobby space by converting their 40ft diameter ceiling in to a screen that could impress and excite their visitors reflecting the resort and its ethos as well current holidays and local events in an awe inspiring way that would get visitors talking and sharing their experience beyond the resort and across the world.

It was decided to utilise a “forced perspective” or “anamorphic” technique to give the appearance of 3 dimensionality when looked upon from a certain angle, but this technique had mostly been used on cornered walls and not on ceilings 12ft above the ground. They needed someone who was not afraid of and up to the challenge.

The ability to create these 3D images in this space was purely theoretical. We needed to develop techniques that built and adapted what had come before, whilst staying true to the goals of the content in a timely manner and to a very high quality. We needed to show the Native American tribes, who own the resort, respect to their culture and land without resorting to cliché and clumsy Western ideas about what it means to be Native American. We had an opportunity to interpret the topics and intent of each video in a creative way, with a moment to wow the viewer and leave a lasting impression. We’d work with our client to truly pioneer something that had never been done before.

We used our extensive knowledge of content creation as a kickstart to calculate and experiment to create a solution that really worked. We were unable to access the screen during development as it hadn’t been installed and was thousands of miles around the earth, so we hand-developed mock-up techniques and utilised VR to confirm that we were on the right track.

We used a mixture of 2.5D compositing of photographic and video elements and implemented 3D rendered items to bring the ceiling to life. In total we created 9 videos of varying length that could loop seamlessly based on a playlist that would reflect the time of year.

These included a hero piece that reflected the local environment showing the landscape, flora and fauna of that part of Arizona, a logo sting to play between the other videos, holiday representations across the year, videos that tie in to sporting events and a soothing sky piece to give the audience a rest from all the excitement. The client and everyone involved was delighted with the results.