The Portland Trail Blazers reached out looking for some fresh ideas for a high-impact opening for the NBA Playoffs. 

The trickiest design limitation was time. This needed to setup within seconds, play for 90 seconds, and then clear within seconds, properly clearing the court for tip-off. One concept quickly became a frontrunning idea: quickly deploy a cylinder to become a massive centerpiece canvas, augment it with 360º projection, then drop it. They loved the idea, and from there I worked closely with the Trail Blazers to actually make it possible, and contribute creative direction for the experience.

A large focus was put on concept development. We didn't want this to only be a cool tube with intense motion graphics— but have a purpose behind it, an intentional narrative, and animated content that reflected a theme.

The story the Trail Blazers wanted to focus on the momentum of highlights through the season and working together as a team. Rotoscoped content from the season's great moments and achievements were cut to Junkie XL's remix of "Come Together," while massive typography flashed above, 360º ring animations surrounded, and PixMob bracelets reacted, all supported the theme that everyone is literally part of this moment. 

We were all so excited about the concept, that the decision was made to keep the cylinder up through the player intros, fullfilling the dream I had to have these players run onto the court infront of their 30ft+ avatars, hyping up the crowd.

Meyer Pro was a fantastic production partner, with years of experience working in the Moda Center, they helped determine best projector locations, media system, and syncronization for all media elements through timecode. They brought on ACME who fabricated a 36' tall screen with custom 2-stage kabuki drop system. PixMob was icing on the cake, adding 20,000 programmable light bracelets to our animatable canvas.

Unfortunately, the Trail Blazers were knocked out in the first round of the Playoffs... now we have some other ideas up our sleeves for next season.

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Client — Portland Trail Blazers
Production Partner — Meyer Pro
Concept & Creative Direction — Craig Winslow Studio
Motion Design — Koji Matsumoto, Trail Blazers
Fabrication — ACMEPDX
Light Bracelets — PixMob