The Voice of Holland show rises to new heights with Egripment support

When Talpa Productions, the company behind the hit singing competition The Voice of Holland, was looking to provide its viewers with a unique television experience, it turned to Egripment’s 15-metre-long Telescopic Camera Crane and Generic Track Rail System for the programme’s augmented reality shots. Airing on RTL4, TVOH is the Dutch adaptation of the popular international television singing competition.

The show, which has been hosted by Martijn Krabbé and Wendy van Dijk since its first season in 2010, is centred around four coaches going head-to-head to select competitors as they audition, to ultimately create their own teams to compete against one another. In late summer 2014, Talpa Productions approached Egripment about the possibility of using its Telescopic Camera Crane for VR/AR. After extensive technical and software research in collaboration with its software partner Trackmen, Egripment decided to take on the challenge.

In order to correct the natural bending of the crane’s arm caused by gravity, the crane was fitted with custom-designed brackets for use with high-quality precision encoders. These were fitted on all camera movement axes, including pan, tilt and the telescopic movement of the crane and remote head. The greatest challenge the companies faced was creating a way to adjust the crane deflection, which was solved with a special algorithm within the software.

Egripment delivered a package comprised of the Telescopic Camera Crane, Generic Track rail system, technicians, crane operators, and data for and calibration of the equipment and studio mapping.

“The beautiful graphic designs, produced by Prographics Netherlands and shot in conjunction with the high-quality equipment delivered by Egripment, provided viewers with an exceptional experience that has never been seen on television,” said Richard Villhaber, Vice President and Sales Director for Egripment. “Director Sander Vahle’s creative input was amazing. It was a wonderful experience for us to work together with Trackmen, Prographics and DutchView to achieve such incredible results.”