Alhurra

"It's all about perspective"

Final spot

The Brief

In 2023, I was brought onto a project for the U.S. government-funded Arabic-language satellite TV station Alhurra. The idea was that there is an art installation, and we are flying through its parts, and at certain moments, the pieces align to create a specific, meaningful image or symbol — Lady Justice, a codex, an AI face, DNA strands, etc. The idea was actually really cool — in a world of noise and mess in society and media, Alhurra helps you gain perspective and see through the noise.

Our VFX Supervisor, Miro Gal, brought me onto an already running project to help figure out the layout, which naturally led to creating the look first — doing concepts and then previz.

The Process

There are many, many variants of this kind of perceptual art installation, like the ones by the well-known Michael Murphy. I started with a deep dive into shitloads of references. And I must say, this is a wild and beautiful (and clever) part of the art world. We have a cool image of our previous president Václav Havel at our Prague airport by Patrik Proško. The idea is always basically the same — to find one spot where everything lines up into a coherent image. But how you create that image in 3D space with objects is the fun of it. That moment when you start moving into that one spot and things start to align — that’s the magic.

The biggest challenge for us was that the client wanted the installation to contain all of the images and symbols inside it — not just one installation per image. Now that… that’s basically impossible :) Because things start to overlap and get in the way of other installations very quickly. You can find installations where you go from one image to a second image — but we had like six of them.

We wanted to animate the pieces in or out as little as possible, so that it feels like a physical installation — at least for the first part of the piece. So instead, we played with turning lights on and off. Alexander Muller was the 3D lead, and he prepped assets that went into Unreal, and then I handed over the scene to him as an FBX for finishing.

The Conclusion

The biggest takeaway for me was the crazy capability of Unreal Engine to handle loads of polygons through Nanite and still perform. I was importing crazy alembics of the Lady Justice statue, for example, and I could play with materials and depth of field already in the engine. I could also plan the background warehouse and where to place the lights there already in the previz. This really helped communication with the client, because they could start seeing the thing come together with more of a “final” look.

Thanks for checking out the project!