CYPRESS, Calif. - (September 8, 2015) - Business in downtown Redwood City, California, has taken an upward turn on Tuesday nights thanks to the Redwood City Improvement Association, Christie®,Tekamaki and BARTKRESA Design. Previously the quietest night of the week, more than 1,000 people now flock downtown to see the San Mateo County History Museum lit up in a stunning visual display.
Influenced by projection mapping projects in America and around the world, Redwood City wanted something to draw people downtown and create a positive economic impact on local businesses. After securing funding to stimulate the downtown Redwood City economy, the idea of doing a projection mapping show became a reality, with the San Mateo County History Museum and Courthouse Square being the obvious choice.
“I always wanted to do something really unique in the Courthouse Square; it’s considered Redwood City’s living room,” said Eric Lochtefeld, owner of the Fox Theatre, and President of the Redwood City Improvement Association.
Enter Tekamaki and BARTKRESA Design
Tekamaki worked with BARTKRESA Design to plan, specify, install and manage the entire project including the installation of the two Christie Roadster S+22K-J projectors on a custom-built cart installed in the Fox Theatre across the street.
According to Bob Loney, managing partner at Tekamaki, they were drawn to Bart Kresa’s artistic style and Kresa said, “We’d love to do this but we have to go with 3DLP and I recommend Christie J Series.”
“Bart was calling out specific benchmarks of light levels that he would want to see with his content. So, from that, we designed and selected the gear. We did look at other products, but we were happiest with the Christie,” said Bob Loney, managing partner, Tekamaki.
“I was approached by Tekamaki to work with them and we agreed to create a 15-minute show that would bring more people to the town, to the square, to the restaurants. They wanted a very dynamic show driven by music and images but said nothing specific about the subject. That gave us a lot of freedom,” said Kresa.
The performance begins with a 5-minute pre-show, a 5-minute video “that is spectacular,” and a 5-minute wind-down. Lochtefeld also requested various screen saver images to play on other nights, creating one still image.
“We created a story with part of it showing the history of Redwood City in parallel to the development of the Silicon Valley - from computer processors to the digital creation of life and humans in the future. The architecture gave us a lot of inspiration because we look for ways to transform the building or different ways of expression with the façade,” Kresa continued.
