The UFC tours four British cities, taking its brand of mixed martial arts to the Odyssey Arena in Belfast, the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle and the MEN Arena in Manchester. London's O2 Arena is the biggest tournament on the UFC's British itinerary. It can accommodate 18,000 fight fans, most of which have been introduced to the sport by the UFC Series broadcast on cable TV from the USA. An essential element in the arena presentation of the event is the giant screen, which allows the audience to follow closely the action and characters such as The Irish Hand Grenade, El Conquistador, The Hitman and Hands of Steel.
Although the sightlines in the O2 Arena are excellent, especially in this in-the-round configuration, visual technology specialists PSL have provided six large projection screens, three of which are arranged at each end of the arena. "The screens are vital to the Championship," explains PSL's Pod Bluman, "so important that the UFC is willing to sacrifice a large number of seats in order to accommodate the large projection surfaces. Using our new Christie S+20K projectors, we were able to give them an exceptional standard of clarity and detail on very large screen formats."
Four 24' x 18' screens were positioned in the 'corners' of the auditorium, while at either end, PSL mounted two 30' x 22.5' screens, built specially for this UFC event. The 12 Christie projectors were flown in double stacks. For PSL, crew chief Dikka Jones led a team of projectionists Phil Pieridis, Matt Jackson and Ian Haywood, engineer Simon Hudson and screen technicians Tim Stefiuk and Dan Soave.
(Jim Evans)
