Mosaic of six animated posters - the Strategic Forum on Clinical Nutrition, Gilead Génese, Navigator's Forest Fires event, Startup Capital Summit, Onda Sem Muralhas and the Música de Cá festival

Six posters that came to life

From a still poster to a holding-screen loop, March to October 2026

Before a livestream begins, viewers at home see the event poster, nearly always standing still. Between March and October 2026 we animated six, from Lisbon's Centro Cultural de Belém to the Fórum da Parreirinha in Peniche.

20 October 2026Cláudio Contracampo

There are two kinds of holding screen, the ones that move and the ones that look broken. Anyone who has opened a livestream link ten minutes early knows the second kind. The broadcast is on air, people in the room are still looking for seats, and on screen there is the event poster, stuck like a lift between two floors. "A still image looks like a technical problem," says Bruno Amaral. "Once something moves, you can tell everything is running."

Between March and October 2026 he animated six posters for those minutes. Nobody asked him for any of them, and none went on air without the client's approval.

A free evening before the CCB

The first one was easy. On the eve of the livestream of the Gilead Génese Programme, which we produced for Expresso, the Portuguese weekly, at Lisbon's Centro Cultural de Belém on 11 March, Bruno had the evening free and picked up the poster. The red background had soft blurred patches behind the logo, and he set them breathing. He also took out the "See the programme" button, which on a holding screen is about as useful as a doorbell painted on a wall. I have a soft spot for people who spend a free evening like that.

The Gilead Génese poster, as it arrived.

The Gilead Génese loop, 12 seconds, without the button.

That same evening he animated the poster for Fresenius Kabi's Strategic Forum on Clinical Nutrition, which we had broadcast from the CCB a week earlier. That one never went on air. It was there to fine-tune the method.

The poster for the Strategic Forum on Clinical Nutrition, with the title in white and light blue over a blue background with specks of light — The Strategic Forum on Clinical Nutrition poster.

The forum loop, 12 seconds.

Eleven attempts in Figueira

In May came the first poster that would not be animated. Navigator and the Clube de Produtores Florestais, a forest growers' association, were meeting on 21 May at the Centro de Artes e Espetáculos in Figueira da Foz to talk about wildfires, and the poster was an aerial photograph, orderly forest on one side and burnt ground on the other, with the white title on top. There were no background patches and no specks of light. There were trees.

On 19 May Bruno made eleven attempts at getting that photograph to move, with light passing over it and with a simulated camera move, and all eleven looked like a picture someone shakes on the wall to pretend there is a breeze. A photograph the eye reads as real will not take fake movement. Images that move only to show they can move get on my nerves, and there are plenty of them about.

The Navigator poster, an aerial photograph of forest over burnt ground, with the Forest Fires title in white — The poster for the Navigator event.

Bruno let go of the photograph and asked Expresso for a version of the poster without the logos or the text, which arrived soon after. He compared it pixel by pixel with the finished poster, separated the graphics from the photograph, and from then on the photograph did not move in a single frame. The graphics move. The ring of lettering on the association's seal turns around the symbol in the middle, which stays put, the Navigator logo flips over and a warm glint runs across the title.

The seal was harder. Turning around the centre of the box that held it, it left ghosts of letters at certain angles, tips that slipped out of the mask and stayed where they had been before the turn. Bruno spent several rounds trying to cover them, until he realised the axis was wrong and that the right centre was the drawing's centre of mass, three pixels to one side.

The Navigator loop, 36 seconds. The photograph does not change in a single frame.

From Coimbra to Peniche

In Coimbra, on 3 June, the Startup Capital Summit dressed up as an airport, and with an aeroplane drawn on the poster it was hard not to send it flying along the dotted line. The organisers had their own videos for the room, and ours covered the minutes between the stream going live and the event starting.

The Startup Capital Summit 2026 poster, with "Faça escala em Coimbra" (Stop over in Coimbra) in large letters and an aeroplane between CBR 26 and World — The Startup Capital Summit poster.

The Startup Capital Summit loop, 27 seconds.

In Peniche the posters arrived upright, and a screen lies on its side. The one for the Onda Sem Muralhas concert, on 3 October at the Clube Recreativo Penichense, came in over WhatsApp, and Bruno recomposed it in 16:9, with the guitar strings vibrating. In the first version the strings stopped two seconds before the end, and with them still you could see the cut, so he kept them playing right up to the seam.

The upright Onda Sem Muralhas poster, in the style of Miró, with a line-drawn guitar, stars and patches of colour — The Onda Sem Muralhas poster, as it arrived over WhatsApp.

The Onda Sem Muralhas loop, 16 seconds.

On 16 October João Leitão's Erro de Raccord opened the 10th Música de Cá festival at the Fórum da Parreirinha, with Peniche Town Council's poster animated on the screen before and after the concert. The next day Bruno gave the council a 60-second version for the remaining concerts. The sea ripples, and the concert list opens one line at a time, large, because of the room's 4 by 2 LED panel. He never got to see it running.

The upright poster for the 10th Música de Cá festival, with the lighthouse, the orange sun, a guitar and the list of concerts from 16 to 31 October — The Música de Cá festival poster.

The Música de Cá festival loop, 60 seconds.