FOX News wanted an eye-catching and compelling audio visual element for their FOX News set, located on the 12th floor of FOX News Corporation in midtown Manhattan and home to the FOX Report with Shepard Smith and the 5PM Hour hosted by Glenn Beck. To meet this challenge, McCann Systems collaborated with set designers to develop an iconic AV element – an enormous, monolithic AV cube, reminiscent of the diminutive FOX logo, but physically and visually commanding. This anchoring AV cube distinguishes the set and reinforces the FOX brand, a highly desired attribute in the completive world of network news.
Challenges were inherent in the execution of the mammoth, 4-sided, rear projection cube. The daunting size of each square screen, an enormous 12 x 12 foot surface, posed challenges in engineering, placement of projectors and utilizing a square aspect ratio.
In addition to the awe-inspiring AV cube, McCann also integrated 5 banks of LCD Televisions, each containing 9 screens, and an assortment of plasma screens – all of which needed to be managed quickly and easily during live broadcast.
McCann Systems was brought on-site late in the project and asked to complete all installation in mere weeks in order to accommodate the live broadcast of the 2009 Election! Having a stellar track record of innovative AV integration in broadcast set design, including numerous sets for CNN and the recent integration for the FOX Business Channel, McCann Systems was properly primed for the challenge set before them by FOX News.
By consulting with set designers early in the process, McCann was able to guarantee that they could technically execute the designer’s unique vision of a massive AV cube. Since the mammoth cube would need to be introduced into an existing space, using rigid screens would be a logistical impossibility. Therefore, McCann specified flexible Stewart 12 x 12 foot Filmscreen 100 and worked with the set fabricators to develop a custom frame. By carefully coordinating the mounting of the screens and placement of the projectors, McCann was able to introduce the colossal cube to the studio and have it coexist with the lighting grid. McCann selected Vista Spyder for its impressive video processing capabilities and video layering opportunities – ideal for accentuating the scale of the cube – and ran fiber optics from the main technical room in the basement of the building to the 12th floor broadcast studio.
