Nashville Ushers in a New Age of Airport Art

Posted onAuthorChris Owen

Nashville International Airport (BNA) ushers in a new era of public entertainment with an immersive multimedia memento for its passengers created by Montreal’s Gentilhomme Studio, uniquely portraying the city’s character through nature, sports and nightlife 
Gentilhomme Studio was invited by the The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority in collaboration with Burns Engineering Inc. to design an experiential multimedia showpiece in The Grand Lobby of Nashville International Airport’s expanded International Arrivals Terminal.

In the security zone, passengers will be greeted by two monumental adjacent displays portraying cultural staples belonging to the Music City and its surrounding region. Spanning two panoramic screens each 70ft wide at 24K combined resolution, hours of fantastical video capsules pay homage to Nashville’s legacy that enchant travelers and engage them with their surroundings. Imparting the first and last impression travelers have on the city, the work will be the cornerstone of the airport’s Project 3 of the BNA® Vision to maintain Nashville International Airport as a world-class facility, to accommodate a record-breaking increase of an expected 23 million annual passengers.

The facility is scheduled to open on January 24, 2023.The passenger experience is completely transformed with this unique approach to digital storytelling in public space through striking, immersive, large-scale visuals. The multimedia content is designed by Montreal-based creative studio Gentilhomme, who celebrate local histories and scenes to bring a sense of identity to a place, transforming the airport into a destination itself. Under the mantra good times await your return, the team produced hours of original video content including advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI) and live action filmmaking captured in over 20 locations within Nashville and surrounding Tennessee areas, including Reelfoot Lake, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Clingmans Dome.

The installation reinvents the digital signage experience with widgets that come alive in real time, offering a unique solution to the way information is displayed alongside entertainment in public spaces.
Maxime Roux / Gentilhomme Studio
Passengers traveling through Nashville will be greeted by over a dozen vignettes experienced as massive digital art postcards. Highlights include: Art of Making, which was filmed at two local music institutions, Nashville Guitar Company and Delgado Guitars, with local legend luthiers. In this piece, Passengers see a guitar fabricated from start to finish, including the selection and working of wood, all the way to the finished product. 

Hall of Fame showcases vinyl records as a symbol of Nashville’s status as the Music City. Distillation exhibits the city’s infamous whiskey distillation process with a whimsical mechanical wall full of pipes, gears and various machinery pieces that are animated to depict the various stages, from grain preparation all the way to aging. City of Lights is a colorful vibrant scene from the city’s cultural epicenter, Broadway Street, in full action.

To produce this segment, Gentilhomme closed the iconic nightlife strip for two days, converting it into a live action film set. Nashville by Night takes passengers on an aerial journey through the city’s downtown skyline, filmed in 8K slow motion using drone and time lapse cinematography, while nature-focused vignettes pay homage to Tennessee’s natural wonders, from lush green forests, waterfalls and cypress trees to the Great Smoky Mountains and freshwater streams.

And then there’s Sports in Nashville, a gametime capsule celebrating Nashville’s thriving sports culture, teams including the Tennessee Titans, Nashville Soccer Club, Nashville Sounds and the Predators. The project is conceptualized and produced in-house by Gentilhomme with Burns Engineering, Inc., Helsel Phelps, Corgan, Fentress Architects, International Display Systems, Inc. Smart Monkeys, Pixera and Omnivex. 
Maxime Roux / Gentilhomme Studio
Nashville International Airport is Gentilhomme’s second multimedia entertainment project in the aviation space in less than a year. Previously, the studio led the design and production of large-scale custom multimedia content within architecturally-scaled features at Orlando International Airport’s brand new Terminal C.

The studio created over 70 cinemagraphic capsules using CGI, artificial intelligence, live action and underwater filmmaking. The experience takes a storytelling approach that interacts with passengers in real time using 3D motion tracking sensors with cameras. “Gentilhomme shapes experiences that provide a sense of identity to a place by creating and producing beacons of entertainment. For Nashville International Airport, we used a large multimedia canvas to bring Nashville’s vibrant energy to life through a series of playful vignettes.

Whether it’s the city’s iconic whiskey distillation or guitar making process, the peaceful and whimsical sketches mesmerize passengers of all demographics in unexpected ways, transforming traditional signage in public spaces into a conduit for immersive storytelling.”– Thibaut Duverneix (Founder and Executive Creative Director, Gentilhomme)
Maxime Roux / Gentilhomme Studio