Scalable Display Technologies Reimagines the Brooklyn Paramount Theater with Seamless Immersive Projection Mapping

The Brooklyn Paramount Theater, an iconic former movie palace in Downtown Brooklyn, has been reborn as a concert venue. Originally renowned for showcasing the latest cinematic releases from Paramount Pictures, the theater also hosted legendary performers such as Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. Over the years, the venue transitioned to a 1,200-seat multi-purpose arena and served as the home court for the Brooklyn Kings basketball team. However, in 2015, plans were set in motion to revive the theater as a destination for live events, with Live Nation stepping in to manage the project. From 2017 to 2023, the theater underwent a meticulous, multi-million-dollar renovation to restore its original charm and adapt it to modern performance standards.

In March 2024, it reopened, offering music lovers and cultural enthusiasts a spectacular space where history and cutting-edge production meet. Known for its architectural grandeur, the theater now combines historic charm with modern technology, creating a breathtaking venue equipped with state-of-the-art lighting, audio and visual enhancements. The centerpiece of this transformation is an immersive visual experience in the theater’s arched entry hall, where projection mapping brings the ceiling to life nightly before each show.

Electrosonic, an award-winning global provider of audiovisual and technology solutions, was chosen to design, engineer and integrate audiovisual technology throughout the Brooklyn Paramount Theater. To deliver an immersive visual experience, Electrosonic selected Realmotion, a real-time platform that supports ideation through prototyping, execution and monitoring of next-generation immersive and interactive environments.

The arched ceiling of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, with its unique architectural details, posed a significant challenge for Realmotion. To create a flawless, immersive display, the solution required seamless edge blending across multiple projectors. The design became more complex due to the ceiling’s unique curvature and intricate patterns. Traditionally, aligning multiple projectors to produce a continuous image without visible seams or distortions would be a labor-intensive process, demanding extensive manual calibration to achieve visual coherence.

To overcome this challenge, Realmotion collaborated with Scalable Display Technologies to implement a cutting-edge solution for automated projection mapping and edge blending. Using Realmotion’s G8 media server for content delivery, the team incorporated Scalable’s Display Manager, a sophisticated software solution that leverages computer vision to streamline projector alignment and edge blending across complex surfaces.

Scalable uses its computer vision-based technology to create precise corrections, ensuring perfect edge blending and seamless mapping to the details of the arched ceiling. Those calibration files are referenced by Realmotion and rendered into each projector output as it fills content across the display for a cohesive visual experience. In the instance where a projector shifts, either during maintenance or over normal use, Scalable’s software allows for quick recalibration, minimizing downtime and reducing the need for costly, labor-intensive adjustments.

With Scalable Display Technologies and Realmotion, the Brooklyn Paramount Theater achieved a show-stopping immersive experience, providing unparalleled visuals in its grand entry hall, seamlessly blending tradition with technology to engage and captivate audiences from the moment they step inside. By eliminating time-consuming manual calibration and achieving seamless edge blending, Scalable and Realmotion created a lasting, impactful experience that aligns perfectly with the theater’s vision of modernized entertainment. Scalable’s software continues to provide seamless visual quality with unmatched pixel performance, sub-pixel blend registration, and sub-degree geometric uniformity, producing a visually stunning and uninterrupted display that truly brings the theater’s architecture to life. Recalibrations are set to run regularly and can be triggered any time for even the smallest misalignment from lens shift or large movements due to maintenance, ensuring long-term reliability and preserving visual integrity over time.