Full Production adds touch of theatre for landmark Kia Showroom
UK – A bold new visual design is available for all to see at the flagship Kia dealership overlooking the Great West Road in Brentford, London. Created by Full Production, the display’s huge LED screen and artistic lighting design turns this – the largest Kia dealership in Europe – into a prominent digital billboard, but with a theatrical edge.
Peering over Chiswick Flyover, the Kia showroom forms a familiar landmark for drivers on the M4 in West London. Its technical refit, designed and installed by Berkshire-based entertainment solutions specialist, Full Production, was intended to create a modern display on the building’s upper floor, but with a ‘theatrical’ touch thanks to the extensive lighting scheme, designed to add depth and atmosphere to the four-wheeled talent while carefully complementing the on-screen content.
In this, Full Production’s extensive background and experience in theatrical and experiential lighting and was a major benefit. The company’s managing director, Steve Richardson, says, “The whole design intent was that we introduce strong, saturated colour around and behind the cars and then pick out the cars in white – with minimal spill – to add depth between the cars and the screen, and to create that sense of ‘theatre’ in terms of cuing and movement. Using theatrical lighting techniques, we aimed to really maximise the impact of the display, with the cars themselves taking centre stage in front of the striking screen – effectively the stars of the show.” The showroom is now ready to welcome its first campaign, scheduled for Q2 2026, and will boast the full EV range currently on offer.
Planning Ahead
In creating and evolving the design with the clients, Full Production built the environment virtually within Syncronorm’s Depence platform and shared pre-viz views with the client. Once agreed, its installation team began on site at the beginning of December – importantly, taking an environmentally conscious approach. The old screen, lighting and tracks were all removed and sustainably recycled under TÜV Austria’s OK scheme, before the new main screen, totem screen, control equipment, lighting fixtures and tracks (manufactured from recycled aluminium) – were installed in just 10 days.
This was achieved despite the challenging logistics of the building itself, plus coinciding with one of the showroom’s busiest periods of car movement, all of which demanded detailed coordination between Full Production’s Project Manager, Lee Phillips, and the dealership site manager. Richardson explains, “The building is three floors and – typically for a car showroom – where there’s a space there’s a car. So we had to deliver everything to the basement, off-load from an 18-ton HGV into a service bay, then move the kit with a small van for careful shuttle-runs up three stories.”
The solution sees a large, high-resolution main LED screen covering more than 60sq.m, complemented by a separate 17sq.m ‘totem’ screen off to the right, both driven by Novastar processing. The showroom’s previous setup had featured a semi-transparent, 16mm pixel pitch screen, with purely functional white lighting on the cars. “We wanted a screen with far greater impact,” Richardson explains, “so chose solid, high-resolution3.9mm pixel pitch modules.”
The lighting scheme uses 140 Jade model luminaires from CLS – 60 of the Tunable White versions, plus 80 of the ColourFlow RGBW, which offer quality colour reproduction from soft pastels to saturates. A CueCore3 solid state controller from Visual Productions provides playback of lighting cues, while central control of the whole system is via Q-SYS.
Performance in Review
The completed installation is remotely monitored daily by Full Production’s team. Status updates are issued by Q-SYS, and an automated system sends short video clips (from two PTZ cameras) to support staff, which can either approve, reject or take further action as necessary. “The installation is fully automated,” Richardson says, “including the remote monitoring and reporting to our team, but there’s always a human element at the end of the process!”
The project was handed over just before Christmas, and the client is delighted with the results. Maaike De Vries, Events and Sponsorship Manager for Kia Motors UK, says, “The new screen is absolutely perfect – so much brighter, with so much more clarity: people can see things so much more clearly. And the lighting has really helped to create more depth, more theatre. It gives us good options to change the whole look and feel of the space.”
On working with Full Production, she adds, “They communicated so well. I feel that they kept me informed through the whole process – and from start to finish it was done smoothly.”
