Mall of the Emirates Christmas Tree

Power Interactive created a digital holiday sculpture with an important social and environmental message for the Mall of the Emirates.

Last year, the Mall of the Emirates and MullenLowe MENA approached Power Interactive to design a media sculpture comprising LED panels forming the mall’s official Christmas tree. The creative team’s sequence began with the tree enveloped in digital wrapping paper that unwrapped during the “unveiling” of the tree. From there, a festive show sequence featuring animated decorative ornaments and fairy dust ran on a loop. Every thirty minutes, the tree caught fire to promote awareness of the global issue of deforestation.

Creative Lead, Video Director, and Notch Artist Uzo Uzoigwe designed the sculpture in Cinema 4D and built a real-world model in CAD software. Uzoigwe imported the CAD model back into C4D to UV map the LED screen panels. He then imported the results into Notch for digital content and project previsualisation. From there, Uzoigwe and team used SpeedTree to model CG fir branches and animate growth sequences and C4D to create the unwrapping sequence, ornaments, and lights.

Uzoigwe tied it all together in Notch. In addition to sequencing the entire show, he added simulations of fairy dust particles, finalised lighting effects and composition, graded colour, and delivered the final output, all with Notch. The project made an enormous splash with 2.2 million views across social media and 120 million total media impressions.