Kino Flo’s MIMIK 120 wins 2023 HPA Award for Engineering Excellence

lo with a 2023 Hollywood Professionals Association Award for Engineering Excellence. Previously this year, the MIMIK 120 also received the Best of Show Award at the Euro Cine Expo and a Product of the Year Award in the “Location/Studio Lighting” category at the 2023 NAB Show. 

The HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence are a coveted honour, denoting outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution, and archiving. A distinguished panel of industry judges review materials and video presentations to determine the shortlist of finalists. The finalists then appear before the panel to answer in-depth questions about their submitted solution. The panel then votes on the top technologies, with the MIMIK 120 chosen as a winner based on the innovation and advancement it delivers for the media and entertainment industry. 

“The MIMIK 120 is designed to create a  full spectrum colour correct lighting environment on virtual sets that perfectly mirrors the LED wall volume via the video signal, ensuring unprecedented realism for every shot,” said Frieder Hochheim, founder of Kino Flo Lighting Systems. “We believe its capabilities are a game-changer for virtual production, and it’s extremely gratifying to have our efforts acknowledged with these three prestigious awards.” 

Optimised for virtual production environments, the 7,200-pixel MIMIK 120 mirrors video content while applying a higher tonal and colour rendering range, delivering extended spectral bandwidth and cinematic color fidelity when lighting talent and set elements. The patented Kino Flo algorithm converts the incoming RGB video wall signal into four or more individual emitters — RGB-WW-CW for the MIMIK 120 — generating synchronised foreground lighting that delivers the utmost realism on virtual sets. 

Featuring a lightweight carbon fiber frame, the adaptable MIMIK 120 is designed to be stacked like a video wall, flown as a ceiling, or put on traditional lighting rigs. The lighting system is controlled by the Megapixel VR HELIOS LED processor — which provides a level of control that would be limiting if performed through a traditional DMX — and delivers 10,000-nits brightness, along with the ability to shoot as high as 900 frames per second and offer as many as 30 Alpha channels at 30 frames per second. A single processor can control up to 2,100 panels — that’s over 15 million pixels with zero latency — which can also be fully synchronised up to 30 kHz to eliminate flickering and support advanced VR technologies.

The 2023 HPA Awards for Engineering Excellence will be presented at this year’s HPA Awards Gala on November 9 at the Hollywood Legion in Hollywood, California.