The audience pixels project for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies was what I spent most of my time on whilst at Crystal CG.

The audience pixels were Danny Boyle’s brainchild but Crystal was responsible for creating the custom content that was played through them at each ceremony.

My involvement in the project was mainly in previsualisation and content testing to help establish what would work on such a massive and complicated device. I was also produced a small amount of the live filming and post-production in the content for the Olympic closing ceremony pixels.

To give you some sense of scale, the display only had around 1/3 of the pixels as an HD TV; stretched 360 degrees around a 80,000 person stadium split across two tiers pitched at different angles and you can start to appreciate how difficult creating content was going to be.

Fortunately the team were some of the most exceptionally talented people I’ve ever worked with and taught me a whole lot about moving image and funky hardware.

The Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies weren’t without fault (I’m looking at you Macca), but I can honesty say that I’m proud to have been a part of such iconic events.