Hippotizer media servers are powering the projection design for the Finnish National Theatre’s current production of Day of Remembrance (Muistopäivä) in Helsinki, a play examining the fate of Finnish citizens who defected to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and later vanished during the Stalinist purges. The system blends outputs from two projectors – an Epson EB-PU2216B with ELPM15 lens and a Panasonic DLP PT-DW6300K with ET-DLE080 lens – into a unified stage-wide image.
A Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 serves as the core of the visual system, integrating more than 147GB of archival letters, diaries, photographs and documents into a layered projection design. The material, sourced from the National Archives of Finland and private collections, has been mapped, blended and composited in real time to create a cohesive visual narrative.
Ville Virtanen, head of lighting and video at Finnish National Theatre, has used multiple Hippotizer viewports per projector to create blended and keystone-aligned outputs for a full-wall image.
The performance space presents projection mapping challenges due to a projection position in the back wall that positioned the main projector too high, with auditorium lights casting shadows across the image. A second projector has been positioned above the stage, closer to the screen, to resolve this.
The system integrates with an MA3 lighting console, with projector lamp and shutter control routed via the Hippotizer using PJLink. A live wireless Sony PXW-Z90 camera, transmits through a Teradek Bolt 500 Pro, fed into the Hippotizer.
Ville Virtanen, head of lighting and video at Finnish National Theatre, said: “The Boreal+ MK2 mades it possible to unify two very different projectors into one large, consistent canvas. Without Hippotizer, achieving the scale and cohesion the production required simply wouldn’t have been possible.”
The set, designed by Janne Vasama, features a glossy red plexiglass floor, a full-width descending black wall with sliding doors, a grey upstage projection screen and black tulle between stage and audience for layered projection effects.
Virtanen added: “We delay the audio by only about 14.6ms, which keeps picture and sound perfectly synchronised. That low latency is essential, because almost all the live footage is shot somewhere other than the stage itself. Once we saw the reflections and the projection working together, we knew we had something special.”
After each performance, audiences exit through a foyer installation where three projectors display the names of 5,000 identified victims from 1938 across the walls.
Day of Remembrance was written by Elli Salo and directed by Riikka Oksanen, and premiered on November 19.
