300 people, 75 projectors, 1 night: Inside Drake's audacious CN Tower light show
Though he's teamed with Drake a few times now, Anil Mohabir said Friday he's still in a dreamlike state after their latest audacious collaboration to launch the Toronto rapper's newest music.
Mohabir helped Drake send an icy blue wave of light up the CN Tower overnight, a dramatic, "real-time, 3D animation" projected against the iconic Toronto landmark.
Together with a fireworks show that lit up downtown Toronto's waterfront, the two spectacles bookmarked a livestream event that ultimately revealed a triple-album drop at midnight: the much-anticipated Iceman and surprise releases Habibti and Maid of Honour.
"We took into account the 3D geometry of the tower and we showed it freezing real-time, with computer animation all the way to the top," Mohabir said.
"Once it reached the top, we [had] a really fun lighting animation that kind of moves around ambient light, like lights were hitting the ice from different angles."
The founder of Studio AM, a Toronto shop known for digital and technical visual design projects, Mohabir had just three-weeks' notice when DreamCrew, Drake's creative production arm, reached out with their idea.
The ambitious presentation took extensive co-ordination, including with the CN Tower's indoor and external lighting teams, Transport Canada and the City of Toronto, while Mohabir also had a crew of approximately 300 people who worked on the project, he said.
The sky-high visual came to life with 75 projectors, sourced from Canada and abroad, that were set-up across three sites, including the roof of CBC's Toronto Broadcast Centre.
"Each projector averages around $200,000, with each lens anywhere from like $25,000 to upwards of $100,000. So the total value of the equipment is very mind-boggling," he said, with the projectors alone worth about $15 million.
Once his team triggered the projection, "everyone was almost in a bit of shock," he said Friday, with a laugh.
Thursday night's spectacle capped a prior buzz-building effort Mohabir also brought to life: a livestream during which Drake rode through the city in an Iceman-branded truck.
Drake has staged a series of headline-grabbing stunts leading up to the release, including leaving a massive ice-block installation in a downtown parking lot, setting off (and filming) a thunderous explosion that lit up Downsview Park in the city's north region and sealing off his regular courtside seats at the Toronto Raptors' home stadium Scotiabank Arena in ice.
Drake and his team are constantly putting "Canadian creatives at the forefront" and finding ways to "elevate the entire city," Mohabir said, something Regent Park-raised Mohabir feels thankful for.
"We're just a bunch of kids from Toronto that kind of have crazy ideas and crazy dreams.... Through the conduit of Drake we're given the opportunity to execute [them] at a really high level."
cbc.ca
