Fredrikstad, Norway — As part of a wholesale technological overhaul in one of Europe’s most evocative museum spaces, projectiondesign has supplied 40 of its high-performance DLP® projectors to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Italy. The projectors were provided by and supported by Italian distribution partner, AGMULTIVISION and installed by Italian System Integrator OVRIT VIDEO.
Housed inside the Mole Antonelliana, Turin’s undisputed architectural icon and once the highest masonry structure in Europe, Italy’s national cinema museum has attracted millions of movie-lovers, enthusiasts, cultural historians and other kinds of visitors since opening its doors on the landmark site in 2000. The museum’s interior was redesigned in time for Turin’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in 2006 but, since then, a number of issues with the existing AV hardware, together with technological innovations in video content storage and distribution, have prompted the management to upgrade again.
Guido Villa of AGMULTIVISION, projectiondesign’s distributor for Italy, explains: “The design of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema is unique in many ways, not just for its setting inside the Mole Antonelliana but also for the way it uses the space. A spiralled walkway leads you towards the top of this mighty building and, as you ascend, a number of themed rooms lead off the main route. Each one of these is a kind of miniature cinema, designed to showcase the work of a particular director or cinematic genre, and each shows suitable pre-programmed video content.
“The projectors previously used in these rooms were really too large for the space. They were noisy and intrusive to the visitor. They also proved very expensive to run. So when we were approached by the integrator OVRIT VIDEO to come up with a different solution, we knew we would have to show a less obtrusive and more economical alternative – without sacrificing quality.”
Following the initial contact between OVRIT VIDEO, projectiondesign and the museum’s management, a series of demos followed in which the key criteria were identified. Finally, a mixture of projectiondesign F12 and F22 DLP projectors were ordered, together with F10 AS3D active stereo 3D models so that the museum could reflect the growing interest in 3D among film-makers and audiences for the first time.
Each projector is served content by a high-definition media player, reflecting the museum’s desire to dispense with tape- and disc-based content as part of the overhaul. Each player receives commands from the facility’s existing control system, requiring additional software to be written by the integration team. However, this was not the only installation challenge, as Alberto Raviola, owner of OVRIT VIDEO, reveals:
“The design of all the cinema rooms could not be altered so we had to use the existing projector-throw distances and, furthermore, the fabric of such a famous 19th-century building could also not be tampered with in any way. Fortunately, projectiondesign offers a wide range of lens options and this allowed us to get the performance we needed in each room. The on-site technical support of AGMULTIVISION, together with the ingenuity of our own engineers, also enabled us to modify the existing projector mounts – saving the museum both time and money.
“Looking ahead, the use of projectiondesign’s Pro-Net asset-management software will enable the customer to get the best return on their investment, while minimising maintenance costs and giving us the data we need to support them remotely.”
The results have been much-admired by both the museum and its visitors, and Anders Løkke, Marketing Director, projectiondesign, says the project has been satisfying on a number of levels:
“The ability to supply a large number of projectors, each one tailored to its own space and application, and support the installation right up to and beyond the commissioning phase, is something projectiondesign and its partners take particular pride in. In the case of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the work was made doubly rewarding because a passion for the quality of the moving image runs right through our company culture.
“To be able to play a part in the preservation and restoration of archived film material, help enable its distribution across such an iconic building and bring pleasure to millions of future visitors, while reducing costs for the customer with no compromise in performance, was an absolute privilege for us here at projectiondesign.”
