LUBBOCK, Texas –100 years ago on Friday, Texas Governor Pat Neff would sign a bill that would open Texas Technological college. This weekend they’re honoring the university by lighting it up and telling the story of how it came to be.
James Hering with TRG, an advertisement agency that won the yearlong contract to work with Texas Tech during its centennial year, is also a Red Raider himself, and said putting the events together has been a memorable project for him.
“It was truly a tremendous honor,” said Hering. “So many of my fellow staffers at our firm are tech graduates as well. So, we put together a special team and had a chance to collaborate, and it’s been one of the [most fun] projects, honestly, of my career.”
Hering said as a Red Raider, you understand the importance behind the administration building on campus, and that was why they decided to project the video on it.
“We chose to illuminate the administration building, the most iconic building on campus, to have the opportunity to really showcase 100 years of history,” said Hering. “Imagine trying to put that all together in a film and we feel like we did a pretty good job of capturing incredible moments from academic to athletics, campus life and everything in between.”
Chris Butscher, a technical director with Lumen & Forge, said he’s had a lot of late nights recently combing through 100 years of footage for the video.
“We’ve been working really hard on the content. Probably a couple of months we’ve got a lot of hours invested in a five-to-six-minute montage of the university’s sports, education, in the future,” Butscher said. “There was a lot of archival footage to process and to work into all the different facets, so it definitely was kind of complicated.”
Butscher said their company is used to doing large projects and even holds records for some of the largest projection projects in the world and took this project on almost a year ago. He said all the hassle is worth the final product.
“I love being able to share all the work when all the stress and freaking out comes together and it all starts playing and then people enjoy it, that’s why we do it,” Butscher said.
The light show will run Friday through Sunday from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 pm in the memorial circle. The show is free and open to the public.
