LOS ANGELES—The HPA Awards committee has announced that Sphere, the Las Vegas entertainment venue, has been awarded its Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation.
The honor will be presented to the Sphere Entertainment Co. team during the HPA Awards gala on Nov. 28 at the Television Academy’s Wolf Theater in Los Angeles.
Sphere marks a revolutionary leap in the realm of entertainment, seamlessly integrating technology to create extraordinary experiences that take storytelling to a new level and transport audiences to new places, HPA said.
The venue offers multi-sensory immersive experiences across film, concerts and marquee events. To create these experiences, in-house immersive content studio Sphere Studio develops and uses proprietary and cutting-edge technology and tools, it said.
As the world's largest spherical structure, Sphere stands 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide. It seats 17,600 people and enables audiences to share immersive experiences at a never-before-seen scale. Sphere is powered by custom technologies, it said.
They include its interior LED display, which at 16K x 16K resolution is the world’s highest resolution LED screen. The screen wraps up, over and around the audience to create a fully immersive visual environment, it said.
To capture the stunning images and video required for this unique canvas, the team at Sphere Studios developed Big Sky, a groundbreaking ultra-high-resolution camera system and custom content creation tool, capable of capturing incredibly detailed, large-format images. In addition, the venue’s immersive sound system, Sphere Immersive Sound powered by HOLOPLOT, is an advanced concert-grade audio system, ensuring crystal-clear, individualized sound within its unique curved design, it said.
Sphere’s technological marvels also extend to its exterior, the Exosphere, which features 580,000 square feet of fully programmable LED panels capable of displaying a myriad of visuals, from an eye to the surface of Mars. The exterior has made Sphere a new landmark on the Las Vegas skyline.
The journey of Sphere commenced with the residency of U2, featuring U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, a spectacular showcase blending the band’s live performance with captivating visual elements. The first film ever created for Sphere, Darren Aronofsky’s "Postcard from Earth," debuted as part of The Sphere Experience, a two-part multisensory journey that marks an inventive approach to content creation and storytelling.
The Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation stands as a tribute to companies and individuals who exhibit outstanding contributions in the realm of creative storytelling and technical innovation. It's a distinction not awarded annually but is rather bestowed upon groundbreaking work, at the discretion of the jury. This year’s jury, co-chaired by Carolyn Giardina and Joachim Zell, also included Paul Debevec, Jay Holben, Joanne Kim and Karen Raz.
"The Jury selected the pioneers behind Sphere—the venue and its related production technologies and workflow—which introduced an exhilarating new type of immersive entertainment and shared audience experience,” the jury said in a statement released last week.
“Now the world’s largest spherical structure, the ambitious new venue includes a 580,000 square foot Exosphere, a 16K wraparound interior LED display spanning 160,000 square feet and a cutting-edge beamforming sound system. As such, new technology and bespoke workflows had to be developed in order to create and display Sphere content. Its debut U2 concert and The Sphere Experience featuring Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Postcard from Earth’ –both of which are venue-specific— demonstrate its creative potential."
Tickets for the Nov. 28 gala event are available online.
