Our brief was to build a 10m tall x 12m wide replica of an oak tree to form the centre piece of the Sony stand at IBC - it's main equipment sales show aimed mainly at selling cameras and related equipment.

The base of the tree was divided into 3 segments; each containing a small film set detailed in a different style.  These sets were a French village square, a caravan interior and a stream and water wheel with plenty of plants and shrubs - plenty of interesting things to point your camera at.

The upper part of the tree had to look real, so we built a steel framework and clad it with carved polystyrene which was then textured, coated and painted to look like bark.  We then fixed real branches in the ends of the carved ones and dressed the whole thing with artificial leaves.

We think there were about 100,000 individual leaves on the tree when it was finished and that it may well be the largest artificial tree ever built.

It was built in 4 weeks from start to finish - pre-built at our workshops in London, dismantled, shipped by road to Amsterdam (4 articulated trucks) and re-assembled in 3 days on site at the Rai Centre in Amsterdam.