LED signs create sci-fi experience in the cinema

Last year, the sci-fi action film, In Time, which stars Justin Timberlake and Olivia Wilde, was a box office hit, achieving good ticket sales in spite of its relatively modest budget of $40 million.

It has now been revealed that the futuristic setting of the film was made more believable, thanks to the use of LED signs produced and managed by Advantage, according to Virtual Strategy.

Over the years, many sci-fi movies have envisioned a future in which advertising hoardings are bright, full colour, interactive experiences, which is indeed a state of affairs that is being made possible, thanks to modern technology.

Of course, using LED signs in a film requires that special attention be paid to the way that the content is produced on the displays, because they will need to be viewed not with the naked human eye, but instead channelled through the discerning conduit of the director’s camera.

As a result, the use of LED signs in In Time had to be carefully controlled, with specially designed software allowing the engineers to be able to minutely manipulate the brightness of the screens on the fly.

Spokesperson, Ivan Perez, spoke out about the challenges faced during the process of production, explaining that there was a burning need to get the futuristic look of the LED signs spot on, or else risk breaking the effect of the film’s world and pulling audiences out of the experience.

Many modern sci-fi movies choose to use CGI in order to generate on-screen imagery and in-movie advertisement hoardings, rather than relying on real world tech that needs to be shot in tandem with the actors. However, this can be a costly process and so using LED signs provides a suitable and effective solution to this issue.