Green Hippo

Madonna gets Gucci on Malawi

Madonna gets Gucci on Malawi

Earlier this year, mega-diva Madonna teamed up with fashion house Gucci as it celebrated the opening of its largest store on New York’s Fifth Avenue with a major fundraising event in aid of UNICEF and Madonna’s own charity, Raising Malawi. The venue was a very large tent constructed on grounds just north of the UN Building in New York City. The evening was co-hosted by the likes of Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher and Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as Madonna herself who gave a musical performance.

However, adding a touch of true glamour to this rather everyday line-up were Video Designer Christian Lamb, Programmer Thomas Hague and Scharff-Weisberg’s HippoTech Joshua Fleitell, alongside Nocturne Productions & VER’s Eric Geiger and Paul Becher who provided Hippotizer hardware and expertise, ensuring the event went off with style and panache.

Lamb used a single Stage Hippotizer Stage V3 to drive the main V9 wall whilst the output signal was also split to several plasma screens in the lobby and at the side of the auditorium for the benefit of those seats without direct line of sight to the main wall. Two 24” Dell monitors were used, one for Zookeeper and one to monitor final output whilst all video content was formatted MPEG-2 by the post-production company.

“We used Timeline to programme three video playback sequences, six auction sequences, a pre-show loop and content for three live performances in all,” says Thomas Hague. “I found the Preset function to be most helpful in building the timelines whilst the intuitive and flexible color controls were instrumental in being able to make final adjustments to blacks and color saturation once we saw the final images on the main wall.”

The three video sequences contained both video and audio for documentary films that were made as a means of introducing speakers and the situation in Malawi. The Auction, hosted by Chris Rock, contained a series of sequences which were basically a title card, an index card (of what items were being auctioned) followed by a variety of custom images to further illustrate the index card. The three live performances consisted of two songs each from Rhianna, Timbaland with Nelly Furtado and Alicia Keys.

“The programming was completed in two and a half days, finishing just prior to the doors opening,” continues Hague. “It could have been finished sooner but, unfortunately, we found ourselves waiting up until the last minute for approvals on all of the artwork to be used in the auction.”