J3 Consulting Handles Screen Management for CinemaCon 2022’s Star-Studded Awards Show

J3 Consulting, LLC lent its screen management expertise to the “Big Screen Achievement Awards” ceremony at the tenth annual CinemaCon at Caesars Palace Colosseum in Las Vegas.  CEO John Mims III used a pair of disguise vx 4 media servers to program and execute the star-studded show, which also featured animated full screen presenter transitions designed by J3.

CinemaCon, the largest and most important gathering of movie theater owners from around the world, is the official convention of The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO).  It featured presentations of new slates of films, exclusive feature premieres and an industry trade show, all targeted to generating excitement for the upcoming holiday box office and beyond.  The concluding night’s “Big Screen Achievement Awards” paid tribute to Robert De Niro, Zoe Saldana, Rachel McAdams, Billy Eichner and other luminaries.

“It was an honor to be part of this event,” says Mims.  “Movies are something I’m passionate about.  The movie industry defined my life as drive-in theaters were a weekly occurrence when I was grown up and some of my best friendships  were forged quoting epic movies like Top Gun- which the new Top Gun Maverick actually premiered at this event.   The size and scale of this event added many layers of excitement and prestige to a fun project.”

In his career in live production, Mims has logged in excess of 20,000 hours programming media servers.  He specializes in Disguise One, Dataton WATCHOUT and other well-known media servers and has a reputation for detail-oriented workflows and flawless execution no matter the size or budget of the show.

As a former creator of After Effects animations for in-house special events at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Mims also applies that experience to designing 3D and 2D content, which he effortlessly integrates into media server workflows.

For CinemaCon’s “Big Screen Achievement Awards” Mims deployed two disguise vx 4 media servers to stream six 2K signals to six LED processors to map the Colosseum’s massive 110 x 43-foot LED screen with 5628 x 2184 resolution.  He also created a series of After Effects graphic transitions that filled the LED screen for scene changes

“The vx 4 were set up with Direct mapping, Feed mapping and Parallel mapping for a few special content elements,” Mims explains.  “The servers received HD cameras for IMAG that I controlled discreetly using one of my aux tracks.

“With disguise, we use Tracks stacked above a ‘Main Track’ or timeline in a hierarchical fashion, which are controlled with multiple Event Transports,” he explains.  “My workflow is to lock my Event Transports to specific aux tracks.  This allows extreme versatility for adding assets such as logos, control cues, IMAG on the fly without affecting our main track/timeline.  I like to take full advantage of this versatility; at times I’ll run five to ten Event Transports for auxiliary tasks on a given show.”

Mims used Max Keyboard’s MAX Falcon-20 RGB custom programmable Mini Macropad to trigger the vx 4’s Transport controls.  He rendered content in NotchLC at 30fps, which “looked amazing on the wall,” he says.

“The incredible power and versatility of the Disguise One platform really enabled the ‘Big Screen Achievement Awards’ show to shine.” In my humble opinion, Disguise One revolutionized the live event industry with their powerful, yet versatile platform. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Everyone from their corporate management, training, and technical support – yield nothing short of a balanced, and elite service/product.