PY1: Through the Echoes

Silent Partners render the universe in Notch for their most ambitious immersive project to date: Through the Echoes/ Au-delà des échos.

Through the Echoes/ Au-delà des échos is a 60-minute immersive experience presented inside the PY1 pyramid, the first travelling show venue created by Lune Rouge Entertainment. A sweeping multimedia epic imagined by Silent Partners’ Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, this 360-degree experience is a technological and emotional odyssey about the evolution of life, from the Big Bang to the present.

Real-time content, traditional 3D content and live-action footage are combined seamlessly with 360 sound and projection to immerse the audience in an otherworldly experience. Notch was their tool of choice when rendering pixel-dense 360-degree scenes at full resolution for each 8K, 75ft wall of the pyramid. Silent Partners were able to achieve exceptional, crisp quality for scenes which required 16,000 px width at rapid render speeds. Easy integration with other 3D packages and hardware enabled Silent Partners to combine Notch animations with a variety of source materials. The team created vast expanses of the universe using Notch’s powerful particle generation systems. Through the Echoes is a seamless integration of technology and storytelling, using state-of-the-art technologies to tell a story as old as time.

“A few months before the show, we filmed 50 people of different ages and backgrounds with the Kinect. We wanted to be able to navigate into a beautiful world of gold made out of dozens of human faces. To create this in a full 360 environment, 16k pixels wide with millions of particles in a 3D cloud was quite a challenge. Notch allowed us to achieve it. The particle systems in Notch are just so efficient and the quality of the graphics is quite impressive.”

Janicke Morissette, Creative Director, Silent Partners

Additional press coverage:
Making Through the Echos Part 1, Making Through the Echos Part 2, Making Through the Echos Part 3, Making Through the Echos Part 4

Credits
Client : Lune Rouge Entertainment
Creative Producer: Guy Laliberté
Show Director: Gabriel Coutu Dumont
Creative Director : Jean Guibert
Production Design, Architectural and Interior Design, Special Effects Developer: Fireplay
Composer and Musical Director: John A. Laraio
Creative Director of Video Content: Janicke Morissette
Lighting Design: Cory Fitzgerald
Sound Design: Jonathan Deans

Design of Kinetic Elements: Patrick O’Mahony
Design and Integration of Technological Systems: Alexandre Barrette
Video content studios: Silent Partners Studio and Reflector Entertainment
Production Director: Michael Anderson
Technical Director of Infrastructures: Michel Tremblay
Producer : Alexandre Miasnikof
CEO and Executive Producer : Stéphane Mongeau