Jimmy Lakatos and Raymond Saint-Jean
Projections Designers
Geodezik is a design and multimedia production company at the meeting point of the visual arts, new media and cybernetics. It specializes in the creation of video projections for the stage and public spaces, including museum exhibitions and architectural installations.
This inventive Montreal-based company, founded in 2006 by Jimmy Lakatos, Mathieu St-Arnaud, Raymond Saint-Jean and Olivier Goulet, is known for its expertise in video design, “video set design” and animation for many artists and entertainment companies throughout North America.
Director Gilles Maheu, dance company O Vertigo, comic Stéphane Rousseau, all from Quebec, and the American rock group Linkin Park and The Killers and singer Justin Timberlake have all turned to Geodezik to enhance their shows. The company also designed the video projections for both Bette Midler’s new show in Las Vegas and for Cher’s Vegas show.
ZAIA is the third Cirque du Soleil assignment Geodezik has worked on. They created the video system for the Cirque show DELIRIUM in 2006 and are supplying video projections for the closing celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City that will take place in the fall of 2008.
Two founding members of Geodezik – Jimmy Lakatos and Raymond Saint-Jean – have worked on ZAIA’s video elements.
Jimmy Lakatos
Jimmy’s career path started in the visual arts and eventually led to “video set design,” which is now his specialty. A longtime friend of Montreal theatre directors Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, he was one of the founders of Artificial, a multidisciplinary digital group whose creations have been seen at festivals and in museums throughout Europe, Latin America and North America.
Raymond Saint-Jean
Director, video designer, writer and editor Raymond Saint-Jean began his career directing music videos and short films. Since then, he has turned to dramas, documentaries and films about the performing arts. In 2003, he won the Rockie Award at the Banff Television Festival for his documentary Le Mozart Noir. In 2006, his documentary Ville Fantôme was awarded three prizes at the Yorkton festival, including the prestigious Golden Sheaf Award of Excellence.
"Given the expressive power and narrative complexity of the images that are used by artistic creations today, designers are employing video to tell stories rather than simply create textures or make backdrops for the stage,” says Jimmy Lakatos. “With Cirque du Soleil, we have the good fortune to be able to create scenery on an unparalleled scale with total creative freedom."
"For ZAIA, we designed a self-supporting 2,300-kg sphere,” adds Raymond Saint-Jean. “It is an unprecedented video sculpture that projects images in a 360-degrees radius using six projectors mounted inside it. This mosaic of images sometimes turns the sphere into a planet, the Earth or the Moon, depending on the requirements of the narrative."