British Airways – Immersive Dining

Studio Giggle was approached by ad agency Bartle Bogle and Hegarty (BBH) as specialists to create a unique dining environment for an idea they had for a British Airways event. The brief was to collaborate with Tom Kerridge and create 7 immersive projected environments to surround diners with the sites and sounds of the world where their food was from. This was all to take place in 6 weeks in New York City. Our team got to work.

The first step is always to brief the team. Creative Director, Jonathan Brigden worked closely with visual artist Duncan Worrall to come up with a workflow to film rather than animated the footage as the schedule was so tight. Meanwhile, the ever intrepid Duncan Worrall ventured out of the cosy confines of the studio. He travelled far and wide to Bristol, Devon and Brighton. Taking multiple photos of the scenes, he then also filmed from the same viewpoint. This enabled him to create a high-resolution image while compositing elements of motion to create a cinegraph. We used this technique to show Brighton Beach for chocolate pebbles; a Cotswolds village for gala pie; a Cornish harbour for whitebait; and a kitchen garden for Parsley Soup.

For the other scenes, we enlisted the help of Giggle stalwart, John Keates, to create immersive scenes in Maya, the leading 3D CGI software. A country house drawing room for pudding. The dark caves of Cheddar Gorge for the cheese course.

To project this immersive environment onto the walls, we first need some, well, walls. Highline Studios in Greenwich Village was the venue. The issue was that 2 sides of the wall were infinity coves. This meant that, if we projected onto the curve the image would bend and distort at every different point in the room. MD Jonathan Brigden did a whistle-stop meeting in NYC. Imagine flying from Heathrow, landing at De La Guardia, ubering across town to a 1 hour meeting, ubering to JFK and flying out again all in one day*. The only thing to do was to build 4 new walls to project onto.

We enlisted the help of long term collaborators in immersion, XL Video who had recently merged with PRG. PRG XL provided the Barco projectors and Watchout media server to enable us to project onto the walls.

Duncan and Jonathan hopped into the business class British Airways seats and spent the week in sunny New York. Grappling with broken frames and inserting last-minute ghosts to delight the audience, we ate our way through 5 days of production.

This rather intense period of Creative activities resulted in a calm and relaxing environment to delight the diners with beautiful immersive settings to enjoy their unique experience.