The installation

Let's get started. On this first drawing, the display is represented from a top perspective so we can analyse all of its elements. The foreground is a screen with the "Polo Sport" logo. It will be the main display for the moving boxers.

Real props and accessories, such as the cords, ground decorations and lights, sport bag... the goal is to anchor the hologram in a realistic environment. All of this will contribute to make the hologram as belivable as possible

Finaly, inside the corners, on the right and on the left, two screens, for informations and characters outside the ring

The most important point to understand this installation, is the couple of glass panels. They behave simultanously as mirror and as glass in order to blend images from the central screen and from the corners

This solution is very optimized for shallow spaces. All the depth is suggested by the central mirrors.

Boxers in foreground, a video-projection

The boxers and the “Polo Sport” logo are displayed by a video-projector as seen on previous figure.

If you take the glass pannels away

Behind the glass pannels is the main video-projection screen. The image is created trough retro-projection by a quite powerful device to boost the hologram luminosity and quality

Video-projection is not perfect and you can observe somes artefacts and "hot spots" on bright color areas.

Every images on this plane, seemingly floating on the middle of the scene, moving boxers and foreground informations are all being displayed on this screen. Beyond the suggestion of movement created by the video clip director, we can observe that all the motion is limited in a single plane where elments move only from right to left.

Boxer in the background: a Pepper’s Ghost hologram

How to make the cords appear behind the main screen ? Well, thanks to the installation of a “Pepper’s Ghost” you can ! This is currently the most popular way to display holograms. For example, it is used for musical shows and holographic meetings to display characters on scene. The way to do it is easy to grasp : a hidden glass pannel is reflecting the image of a character. Thenceforth, the public will see the images superimposed to the real background. And that’s how you get your holograms.

The two corners on each side as well lighten and contain :

• the cords
• the floor and its lights
• the sport bag in the right corner
• 2 screens, at their very end displaying:
  • the sitting boxer in background plane
  • informations and details
  • big lights like in stadium

All of this elements are reflected by the glass pannels,

Without main screen

If you could see directly into the corners, you would find all of the elements you can see in the central holograms.

Several depth details are scattered around to improved the hologram impact : a sport bag, lights on the sides, light spots on the ground pulsing with video, etc. Indeed, as Pepper's Ghost keeps the perspective, any element helps the observer to see the perspective of the scene.

Depth and projection

This installation is a particulary smart use of the Pepper's Ghost. It's using its qualities and adding other elements to strenghten its limited capabilities. The innovation here is to use a combination of holograms and video-projection to created life sized images. Indeed the most important limitation of Pepper's Ghost is the space it needs to display anything close to a full scale character. This explains why it was only used in spacious environments such as theatre scenes.

The hologram make a smart use of background elements to give a nice feeling of depths. The well executed realisation is a main point of the hologram sucess. The movie itself, directed by Ralph Lauren with care, give all its meaning and depth of the marketing message and brand identity.