Spain, at the Shanghai Expo, through the eyes of three filmmakers

A Universal Exhibition is always an excellent showcase for audiovisual and presentation systems. Inspired by the general theme of Expo “Best city, better life”, the contents of the Spanish Pavilion have been placed in the hands of three of the most outstanding directors of Spanish cinema: Bigas Luna, Basilio Martín Patino and Isabel Coixet.

A spectacular evening ceremony with a visual staging of dances, light, water and fireworks over the Huangpu River, that crosses the enclosure, served this weekend as the official opening of the Shanghai Expo, already considered the largest Universal Exhibition in history. For now, It has already set a record in terms of the number of participants, with 189 countries and 50 International Organizations, And now it has the challenge of being the most visited, hoping to overcome the 70 million visitors. Regarding the Spanish Pavilion, responding to the theme of this Expo “A better city, A Better Life”, It has three rooms (with a surface of 2.500 square meters) that show the change experienced by Spanish cities from the sixties to the present day under the slogan "From the city of our parents to that of our children." The aim is to convey a modern and contemporary image of Spain and its cities through comprehensible and attractive content for a Chinese audience that is interested in the, for the most part, He hardly knows the Spanish reality. Following a public tender called by the SEEI, the execution of the contents was awarded to the UTE EMPTY-NOE. Its formalization is not limited to the use of audiovisual media, but are combined with spectacular installations, special effects and live performances that will amaze visitors. EMPTY entrusted Sono, Company specialized in engineering projects and audiovisual consulting, the technical design of the project and execution of the audiovisual means of the Pavilion. An ambitious project in 2008 Sono's engineering team along with EMPTY and creatives (Bigas Luna, Martin Patiño and Isabel Coixet) They began to define each of the spaces. Sono's engineers began to come up with possible solutions to the needs of creatives. At the same time as the design progressed, prototypes were assembled and a number of tests were carried out, for which Barco collaborated by providing material and moving its product engineers to Spain. This process ended with the completion of a detailed executive project and an excaptive work plan. The first room to be visited in this Spanish Pavilion has been named Origin, and was commissioned to Bigas Luna, with a journey through time that aims to tell what identifies us in relation to other countries: Strength, the DNA of the Spanish in the world. This room consists of 19 CLM R10 projectors projectors projecting onto two screens with curved shapes, Each of the screens measures about 50 meters long by 5 meters high and a very high-resolution video signal is projected. The signal is generated by the Wach out system and sent to the projectors via fibre optics. The projections are part of an audiovisual show, It has 24 Independent Sound Channels, Mechanical Elements for Moving Objects, spectacular lighting and an exclusive Sono system to ensure that the floor vibrates synchronously with the content of the projection. For its part, Basilio Martín Patino has been in charge of designing the room Towns. Presenting the changes experienced by Spanish cities in the last half century in just seven minutes is not easy and who could do it better than the old filmmaker. Combining archival and filming footage, Martín Patino paints an ironic and tender portrait of today's Spain, intentionally fragmentary and that again, It aims to excite rather than explain. A helical room equipped with a multi-screen system will condense the film of an entire urban life into seven minutes of footage. It consists of five rectangular screens of different sizes irregularly located in space. The screenings are made with 25 Barco CLM HD8 projectors. Watch out technology has been used to generate the video signal and all the elements are controlled by the Medialon control software. Like the previous show, it's a show that masterfully combines sound, video and lighting. The Spanish Pavilion at Expo Shanghai 2010 It closes with a dream. The future, as seen by filmmaker Isabel Coixet, It is a place for hope and for the promises of a better world. The room called Children, That is why it has an absolute protagonist: Miguelín, A baby who dreams of his surroundings, the cities they'll live in, in which our children are already living. A curtain will project images of young children greeting visitors, "Hello", "Nihao", in Spanish and Chinese, creating an atmosphere of magical reverie sought by the director. Miguelín presides over the room from his overwhelming and colossal hyperreality. This room consists of three projections on curved wire screens. For the projection, the following have been used: 3 Barco CLM R10 projectors. The rest of the room is equipped with a large animatronic (Miguelín) of 7 meters high and various plasma screens.

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