Christie 360 Experiential Studios, a division of Cypress, California-based audio-visual company Christie, announces an installation it did at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre—formerly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The company delivered what it says is the the world’s first permanent projection mapping show on a cinema fa?ade.

Designed by the Christie 360 team to enhance the guest experience, the forecourt show was launched recently in front of a large audience. Visuals of ‘forecourt of stars’ handprints, Chinese dragons, and actual movie clips from memorable films that premiered at the Chinese Theatre emerged onto the theatre’s front entrance, which was digitally transformed into an architectural ‘screen.’

The building’s brick-and-mortar exterior was transformed into a digital canvas using “projection mapping,” a technique that uses projected images, blended to fit perfectly onto irregularly-shaped surfaces, to tell stories and ignite action, the company says.

According to the company’s announcement of the project, “For TCL Chinese Theatre, teaming with multimedia directors and software specialists working for Christie 360, this involved ‘producing’ several colorful, immersive illusions combining traditional Chinese fireworks and mythological creatures with intense, evocative color and black and white clips of famous movie scenes.

“The flipping, cascading tiles in the midst of the projection mapping show are realistic representations of the actual hand- and footprint tiles in the Chinese Theatre forecourt. Almost a century of stars leaving their marks in the wet cement of the forecourt has gone a long way in making the Chinese Theatre the institution it is. Imparting an illusion of depth to the fa?ade, the rotating, cascading and flipping effects are a proven bit of the visual language of projection mapping.

“The montage of movie clips near the end of the projection mapping show is TCL’s way of tipping its hat (so to speak) to 100 years of cinema history. It also works as a sort of basic timeline of the Chinese Theatre’s history and that of Hollywood Boulevard itself, which matches in large part the history of big screen storytelling. Moreover, most (if not all) of the clips featured are pulled from films that premiered at the Chinese Theatre.

“Finally, the Theatre ‘crumbling’ at the end of the show exploits another classic trope in projection mapping visual language. Beyond the illusion of depth that the crumbling delivers, the dramatic ending is meant to give the audience a sense of climax and catharsis.”