Paintscaping for Sandwich's 375th

One of the events for Sandwich's 375th Anniversary Celebration was a light painting display on the First Church of Christ, the first weekend in August.  I was intrigued and decided that if nothing else, I was going to try and make this one.  But then I forgot about it until a couple of my friends posted pictures of it on Facebook on the Sunday night.  I was so bummed I missed it, till one of them told me it was going to be on Monday night as well, so I got to town around 8 to get a decent spot to watch.  I was lucky to get an unobstructed view. It was a gorgeous evening; that's the moon above the tree.

I thought this looked cool; they were setting up the projector and lit the church up like a negative.

I wasn't sure what to expect of this display...I figured it would just be slide shows on a white building.  The company is called Paintscaping, and they are based in Los Angeles.  Steve Catania, whose family owns the Dan'l Webster Inn, had gone to LA for a conference and saw a Paintscaping presentation, and knew he had to have them for the 375th.  If you check out the link to the company, it will take you to better pictures.

The show started out with some pictures and narration of the history of the town.

Then the animation changed and 'built' the church with light as it moved up from the base to the steeple; it looked more impressive in real life than in my pics, but ended with this.

Then lightning flashed on the church and I was only able to capture this one frame.  It was hard to do!

Then perfectly lined up, a pic of the church zoomed in!  It was a neat effect.

Then they got Town Hall lined up on it!  How perfect is that?!

Next, the narrator discussed the town's history of glass making, with this pic of the current Glass Museum.

And the old Glass Factory.

Beautiful animated images of Sandwich glass appeared.

Then vines and flowers crawled up the church to represent Heritage Museums and Gardens.

As the vines reached the steeple, a seascape appeared from below.

A hat tip to our iconic Boardwalk but I don't think the image used was actually a picture of the true boardwalk and that may have been because it would not work on the church's architecture.

The little boy figure walked into view, looked down, then up at the No Jumping sign which got a laugh out of the crowd watching.  Then people started yelling, 'JUMP!' and of course the animated boy vaulted over the rail and made a splash!

The fish animation was probably my fave and I didn't get good pics of it because I was too busy watching it not through the lens (and I missed a good bit of the show because of seeing it through the camera).  As they swam towards the pillars, they would disappear behind them and come out the other side, just like in a real fishtank.  The 3D look was killer.

Then a nod was made to Joint Base Cape Cod, which used to be called Otis AFB and Camp Edwards. We all still call it Otis.  The premise of this narration was an air traffic controller talking to an Air Force pilot who was flying into town, and where was the church?

The pilot was telling the air traffic controller he couldn't find the church....and then, uh oh, he found it...it's made of glass!  

Then you heard loud shattering and the glass church broke.

This was pretty freakin cool.

After the glass shattered, animated 3D fireworks displayed.  And also, the music used on this presentation was simply beautiful.  It lasted about 10-15 minutes and was repeated immediately after it was done so I did get to see it with my eyes and not through the camera.   I was also a bit teary eyed after the show; they did a great job with it.  A huge thank you to Steve Catania and Paintscaping for bringing this unique show to humble Sandwich.

After the show I had to get a shot of this, although I wish the town would replace the lights on 5 that are out!