Every year filmmakers and fans from around the country gather in Cape Town for what has become one of the premier film events in South Africa: the kykNET Silwerskermfees, a film festival offering a platform to showcase newly developed films. 2019 marked the ninth year of the festival, and as always, kykNET were determined to deliver an excellent event and experience.

The technical production of the festival was delivered by Ampere Event Technology under the direction of ARGH! Post Production Services.

“The brief from kykNET was simple enough: ‘Focus on the content’,” Antonio Baleiza from Ampere, who served as project manager on the event. “We set the goal to elevate the content beyond what we had achieved in previous years. Being our third Silwerskerm festival, we wanted to apply technical innovations in the space to deliver a result that exceeded the expectations of the client and festivalgoers.

“Silwerskerm is a festival for industry insiders, producers and directors who are showcasing unreleased films recently mastered in the best post-production facilities in the country. The majority of these films had not yet been seen outside of those environments, so it was imperative that we set a high standard for ourselves, trying to exceed the quality of experience of viewing in a commercial cinema. The ARGH! and kykNET teams are veterans in the film industry, and so we applied our learnings of the shortcomings of traditional theatres and sought to exceed those limits here,” says Antonio.

The team decided that all three cinema spaces for the festival needed a 5.1. audio solution and unrivalled picture quality, and opted for laser projection and D&B loudspeakers to achieve this.

PROJECTING

“These films are made for cinema,” says Marc Baleiza from ARGH!, “so it is important that we maintained a cinema experience, but avoided the dull sound and dim projection we so often hear about. On a subjective level, we showcased several legacy projects this year. Therefore it was important to maintain the cinematic aesthetic within which the films were crafted.”

Determined to achieve this high level of quality, the team made use of Epson laser projectors for the screening of all films as well as for AV display during the after-party function. “The resolution is fantastic and the colours very true,” Antonio says. “The colour gradient over the entire screen was extremely even, something that can be lacking in standard lamp projections.”

In the Rotunda, the team made use of the Epson L1755U, a powerful 3LCD laser projector designed for larger venues which boasts bright and vivid images, even in daylight. The other two venues both made use of the Epson L1405U, another pin-sharp projector designed for large spaces.

“The brightness of these projectors was incredible,” Marc explains. “We actually needed to reduce the overall brightness to calibrate picture accurately. It is very frustrating to reach the ceiling of a projector’s output and not be getting the crucial luminance, contrast and saturation values we are aiming for. The Epson units delivered to the point we could trim away and get to a desirable calibration level. I was impressed by the consistency of these units out of the truck,” he adds. “We had minimal adjustments across the projectors spread over the festival. That was a huge win for us, being able to walk from venue to venue and be confident in how the picture was going to look.”

Asked about the best features of the projectors used, Antonio was similarly impressed: “The brightness and colour is fantastic. Lining up these projectors is also pretty easy and quick. The network connectivity also makes this process much easier.”

Working in post-production, Marc has made use of many of the more common brands in the DCI and Film spaces. “Epson is not your typical DCI projector, and so there was initially some concern about that,” he says, “but we did our homework and lined up the projectors with proper film grading gear, and we found that they aligned very well. We took a bit of a leap, but it worked out.”

It certainly did: according to Antonio, everyone from the technical director, right through to the client and the participants in the festival were “blown away” by the replication of picture of the projectors from an OLED calibrated to industry colour standards. “I think everyone considers Epson an office- or home-use brand, but I must say that they’ve done a great job of delivering a quality product to the events industry.”

Marc agrees: “The overall response was fantastic. We had several compliments from the country’s best directors, producers, actors and critics. This of course made the kykNET and ARGH! technical team very proud of what we were able to achieve. With the support of Ampere, who were incredibly helpful, sharing our desire for excellence, we all felt that this year’s festival was a resounding success. If anything, we’ve just made it a little bit harder to raise the bar for Silwerskerm 2020.”