Open Air Cinema’s founder, Stuart Farmer, has been in Kenya with Google and the Field of Dreams project. He is helping train the students at the Moving the Goalpost school in operating and maintaining a 16′ CineBox system donated by Google and the Field of Dreams project. Stuart provides the following update to his work.
It’s nice to see how quick the Kenyan people enjoy themselves with dancing and singing. At every event the students grab the mic to create impromptu dance parties. Due to the games being rear projected, the girls can’t hear their karaoke voices very well as they stand behind the speakers, which are pointed at the audience. Once in a while the girls turn up the volume on the mixer so they can better hear their own singing. They’re not realizing that the sound is becoming extremely loud up front, blasting the audience! We have a good laugh as we fight to control the volume knob. I keep saying, “those cute little kids up front! you’ll make them deaf!”
I’m impressed by the natural MC talent here in Kilifi. The girls are becoming more bold and confident at addressing the audience at each subsequent event. Nearly every time, Janet invites local kids up to take the mic, such as the two Kilifi boys in this video freestylin’ for the crowd.
It’s great to get a chance to listen to the local African pop music. A couple days into the project, I asked our driver to take me into town to get the best music. We went to a little shack lined with tapes and obviously pirated CD’s. I brought back 8 handmade CDR’s full of MP3‘s and .wav files. I loaded them into the laptop and transferred them onto the iPad. At the event, the girls looked at me with surprise when I opened a playlist on the iPad with hundreds of songs that they all know and love. So that’s our music, all their own stuff. We make sure to play it before every event. Outdoor cinema is a celebration — you gotta have some thumping good music to get people in the mood. I’m glad I could pick up the music. I have a feeling I’m not going to find these artists on iTunes. Who knows. As for now, I won’t go home without Lucky Dube’s Greatest Hits.
The following is an excerpt from an article originally published in 
If you like your outdoor video entertainment a bit more active, any projector with composite video and RCA audio inputs can easily be hooked up to the Nintendo Wii gaming system, throwing human-size characters on any available projection surface. For the standard-def Wii an ordinary white tarp will do. To ensure a 6-foot-tall image, you’ll want a tarp measuring at least 11×6 feet (for a 16:9 aspect ratio) or 8×6 feet (for 4:3 aspect). Tie the ends to trees or use spring clamps to attach your tarp to a fence. Keep in mind that the Wii needs an infrared-light-sensor bar placed at the bottom or top of the screen to work properly, and the wire for the Wii’s IR bar is 11 feet long, which can restrict the placement of the Wii and, consequently the projector. In my experience, you want to get your projector back a good 10 to 15 feet to ensure a large enough image. That’s doable with the existing wire, but you can avoid a lot of potential trips and tangles with a wireless IR bar accessory from Nyko ($20). Also, you’ll want to offset the projector to get it out of your way and avoid playing against your shadow. Most projectors have dials that allow you to correct the keystone effect you get when projecting from an angle. Once you’re all set up, you and your friends can swing your Wiimots to your hearts’ content while racking up strikes in your virtual open air bowling alley.
