The 2021 edition of the Derry Halloween festival saw crowds returning to the city after the cancellation in 2020 due to Covid-19. The organisers wanted to create an audio visual experience at Ebrington Square that would allow the public to attend, while also maintaining social distancing. Rather than creating one single screen that everyone would face towards, I designed a circular LED structure that could be viewed from all sides of the park, allowing people to evenly spread out. The structure consisted of individual LED pillars and was 7.2 metres tall and 7.6 metres wide.

The theme of the show was ‘Awakening the Walled City’ and it featured various characters from Derry’s history and Irish mythology including; Walter De Burgh, Cailleach, Morrigan and the Banshee. The story is told by the Seanchaí, a traditional Irish storyteller. I developed the concept of the show from start to finish, storyboarding how each scene would progress and what actions each character would do. The actors were shot in front of green screen and then placed into the various scenes.

As a lot of people were still uncomfortable being in crowds, the show was also streamed online. I suggested that we should add extra animated elements for the stream. I created these in Notch, as I wanted the elements to look like they were moving around the actual structure. Everything was then played back through a Disguise server.