BOAT International is delighted to announce that Andrew McNamara, head of computer graphics at Cinesite, will be a speaker at the Superyacht Design Festival in Kitzbühel, scheduled to place from February 2 - 4, 2025.
Established in 1991, the Cinesite Group is one of the oldest visual effects companies in the world and has a rich history in creating animation and visual effects for film, television and streaming media. Credited with some of the most iconic cinematic moments in films – ranging from Star Wars to Harry Potter – Cinesite has delivered visual effects for multiple classics, including nine Bond films, the first of which, Goldeneye, was the first to utilise CGI.
The company is also a pioneer in Hollywood-standard immersive video entertainment, particularly installations where cinematography, sound design and visual effects work together to create realistic and enveloping spaces.
In this illuminating talk, Cinesite’s head of CG, McNamara will take us on a journey to the realms of where immersive film can go, and how it could be used to create extraordinary, one-of-a-kind yacht interiors.
Cinesite is behind a number of immersive art projects, including Forsaken, an ambitious digital artwork at one of Europe's largest immersive public spaces Outernet London, now extended to June 2025. Directed by Roland Lane, the film covers the life cycle of a jellyfish and serves as a powerful environmental call-to-action over climate change.
"Creating Forsaken was a technical challenge, pushing the realms of what is currently possible with immersive films," McNamara surmises. "We really went for it, pushing ourselves and what was possible, ultimately creating eight minutes of content, at 50 frames per second across the five-wall canvas."
Perhaps Cinesite’s most notable project is the hit exhibition Frameless, a multi-sensory art gallery based in London where visitors can ‘step inside’ the artistic masterpieces of Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Edvard Munch, Canaletto, Salvador Dali and more. One of the most popular exhibits was the Rembrandt room, a hyper-realistic recreation of the Dutch master’s painting Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee which went viral on social media.
"We wanted to make people feel as if they're really part of the ocean," said McNamara of the installation. "So we worked up a number of different ideas of how we could actually take the original painting and expand it out as a 360 around the viewer. One of the considerations was to make sure that it always looked like it could have been plausibly painted by Rembrandt."
Recreating the famous oil painting was not without its challenges,"Firstly, the painting itself is in a square format. Plus, this was the only seascape Rembrandt ever did and we didn't have an awful lot of references to go on, so we had to do a lot of testing just to make sure we kept within the boundaries of what artistically Rembrandt would have done."
McNamara and the team underwent many painstaking hours of computer animation, using the most advanced technologies and techniques and zooming in on minute details such as the behaviour of water foam and how the boat interacts with the waves.
It is bookended by other immersive paintings and the idea is that the visitor is taken on a journey. The idea was to connect people with the paintings on an emotional level, according to McNamara: "In the Rembrandt room we wanted to make people feel like they were in the middle of a storm, so perhaps a little bit scared, a little bit on edge. So we used different audio techniques and visual tricks such as lightning flashes going off behind the clouds."
Read More/Everything you need to know about the Superyacht Design Festival 2025Hear McNamara talk more about Cinesite’s work at the Superyacht Design Festival from 2-4 February and how it could be used in yacht interiors to create a next-level experience.
The Superyacht Design Festival 2025 will see some of the biggest names in design come together with experts from the wider luxury community for exciting discussions, plus a social programme, the Boat International Design & Innovation Awards, the Young Designer of the Year Award, the BOAT Artistry and Craft Awards and the famous Ski Cup, sponsored by Lürssen.
Attendees can expect an exciting lineup covering all areas within the sector. This year’s talks also include presentations by top New York kinetic artist Zolty, an update on the much-anticipated sailing build Project Zero, panel discussions on nuclear and hull innovation and a special talk from the designers of the Paris Olympics’ silver horse, the semi-submerged catamaran that ‘flew’ along the River Seine at the opening ceremony.
With just three weeks to go before the festival (2-4 February), tickets are selling fast. Book now to avoid disappointment.
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