Close your eyes and picture yourself at Los Angeles International Airport. What comes to mind? Wait, you didn't think "romance" and the "magic of travel"? The powers that be behind the revamp of the Tom Bradley International Terminal are hoping you will get that vibe, and to help jazz up your LAX departure and/or arrival, the space is going to be home to the largest multimedia installation in any U.S. airport.
Before he left the mayor's office, making LAX's Tom Bradley terminal snazzier was one of Antonio Villaraigosa's parting projects. Now, let's face it, it would have only taken some wifi and a TCBY to improve the terminal, but Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) went all out, and earlier this year the first big changes made their debut.
LAWA brought in a Montreal-based firm, Moment Factory, to create four hours of video content and interactive capsules that react to people's movements for display in the terminal. Those images are "focused on the passenger experience, the iconography of Los Angeles, and the destinations served by the new terminal," and aim to evoke the "romance and magic of travel," says Moment Factory.
Travelers, it's intense, as outlined by Variety:
The seven distinct media features include an 80-foot LED display, or “Welcome Wall,” that greets arriving visitors to Los Angeles, and two separate “Concourse Portals,” consisting of 10 video columns which respond to the movement of passersby and update in real time with information about departing flights, offering custom experiences for travelers bound for the terminal’s 15 most popular international destinations.
The principal attraction is a four-sided, 72-foot Time Tower surrounding the terminal’s main elevators — a trompe l’oeil feature that animates constantly, appearing to open up on the hour to reveal Busby Berkeley-style dancers operating the clockwork inside. The Time Tower synchronizes with the adjacent Story Board, which [Moment Factory creative director Sakchin] Bessette described as “a new type of cinematic experience” that is both immersive and communal, unspooling in a public space.
Oddly enough, it took a crew of Canadians to bring movie-magic to Los Angeles. “We’re in show business,” Moment Factory partner Éric Fournier
told Canadian Business. They worked with Marcela Sardi of Sardi Design and Mike Rubin of MRA International to come up with the seven multimedia features at the terminal.
Those installations will be hard to miss once you're inside the namesake Antonio R. Villaraigosa Pavilion; hopefully if you are stuck there waiting to pick up someone who is suffering the line to clear customs you can enjoy the "video of cityscapes dissolving into ink, floating flower petals, beautiful dancers and yes, parrots, all inspired by the destinations of the disembarking flights," describes Canadian Business. So fancy, eh?
Here's a demo video of the installation, recently released by Moment Factory.
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) - Demo from Moment Factory on Vimeo.
