In December 2011, the 12th quadrennial Arab Games took place in Doha, Qatar at Khalifa International Stadium. As part of the planning process for the Doha games, the world-renowned event production agency, David Atkins Enterprises (DAE), was commissioned to conceive and produce the opening and closing ceremonies. Following this commission, DAE contracted Australian digital design and video production specialists, Digital Pulse, to produce the animated visuals for the opening ceremony including the athletes’ parade and cultural segments. Far from a conventional production canvas, the animated visuals that the Digital Pulse team were to produce for the event would have to play seamlessly across the stadium’s two different playback systems: a contiguous LED system installed behind all stadium seats and an 86-projector projection system that covered a world record 12,600 cubic metres of on-field projection space.

As we mentioned what now seems like ages ago, we spent a year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. The introduction plus one or more additional videos from each course are available for free preview; we re-posted here on PVC the videos that contain tips and instruction you might find useful. Well, the series is done, and we’re off writing the next edition of the book. But before we go, we had one last video to share with you, which may be of interest to any After Effects user who still has to create both 16:9 and 4:3 versions of their compositions.