A call to lazy street projectionists!

In one case, a projection executed for Warner Music caught my eye because of how bad it looked... When I chatted up the guys running the show, they didn't appear stressed about it. They simply didn't know how to use the equipment and seemed to be OK with that fact. I helped them flip the projector settings from rear to front, I let them borrow an audio cable they didn't have, and when I told them they were simply using the wrong lens for the wall they'd chosen, they had no idea what I meant. In fact, they didn't even KNOW they rented an additional lens and it was sitting in it's shipping case in their van. Needless to say they couldn't have changed the lens themselves anyway. Another time (same week), I saw video so horribly keystoned it looked like a geometry lesson. Any pro projectionist knows to do keystone correction without using the projector's own correction as it isn't sophisticated enough for a guerrilla scenario.

I think it's pretty irresponsible of a marketing company, and their client, to be satisfied with such poor presentation. When done RIGHT, outdoor projections can be an unexpected, exciting, and even an ecofriendly way to promote a product/brand and otherwise create an emotional/lasting impression by use of the street experience, so different than traditional media.... when done WRONG however, the experience is one of straightup light and noise pollution (2 things NYC does not need more of), as well as a waste of basic resources. The clip above is not new but seeing badly executed projections made me want to rant on the subject and show how to do it correctly. Also worth mentioning, the video clip wasn't authored for public consumption but rather to show the my client all the locations we used over the course of a week (the reason for the long 6+min runtime of the clip). We used a 15k lumen projector, and some software I created (by using the Isadora authoring environment) to handle extreme keystone correction. As long as I can overshoot the projection surface, I can create the expected 4:3 or 16:9 shape from pretty much any extreme projection angle. I set the keystone by manipulating an OpenGL plane via midi controller, specifically an Evolution uc33e slider box. This makes it a very quick and easy process for an operator to drive up to a would-be projection surface (aka the side of a building) and use sliders to position the four corners of running video. It's all realtime, and all a little magical to play with, especially when the image is 150' tall.

A message to the guerrilla marketing companies out there (along with Warner Music), please stop being lazy, use these new methods to create dialog among passersby, not a reason to complain.

The projections in this video clip was for Peroni Beer. We were instructed to execute close to parties and events surrounding FashionWeek in New York City.

See another blog post about street projections Here, and see Isadora screenshots of my keystoning software within this blog post.