LeBron James MVP Laser Projection

Lightwave International uses 39W of full-color lasers to honor Cleveland Cavaliers NBA star LeBron James as MVP on a massive scale. With just 24 hours notice, Lightwave executed this laser spectacle for Nike on a 100’x 212′ black banner draping a building adjacent to the Cavs arena.

When you think of a movie projection screen, you think of a white screen. Imagine, instead, that you go to see your favorite movie at the theatre and the screen is black. You would probably request a refund and leave early – after all, you certainly wouldn’t be able to see any images on the screen.

Lightwave visual designers faced a similar challenge with this project: the projection screen was black. Producing the results seen in these pictures would require massive laser power. In fact, it would take an assembly of the world’s largest full-color lasers: four of them were on-site for this event.

The laser projectors were combined on the screen to increase brightness threefold and eliminate all flicker that is common with improperly used lasers or slow scanning speeds. This technique produced a net scanning speed of nearly 100,000 points per second on-screen and resulted in a sharp, consistent image.

This allowed viewers to photograph the presentation with point-and-shoot cameras, cellphone cameras, etc — and expose images identical to what they were seeing in real life. Thousands of visitors captured photographs, and many examples are visible on social networking and media-sharing sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Network and news video cameras also found the images incredibly simple to capture as a result of this technique. Footage from the overhead blimp and from cameras on the surface received impressive airtime for our client on the major networks.

To complete this piece of art, Lightwave visual designers also added a lighting package to properly illuminate LeBron James’s image. The clever programming of lasers cut out behind LeBron and the dimension created by the lighting created a depth and realism to the project that could only be experienced by firsthand viewers.