Every year, the City of Barcelona chooses a foreign city to spotlight during its biggest festivities of the year, the Mercè Festival. Montreal was chosen in 2012. In response to this honor, the City of Montreal asked Moment Factory to create a multimedia show to be projected on the Sagrada Familia's Nativity façade. Moment Factory's team of multimedia artists, led by director Nelson de Robles and producer Johanna Marsal, started to work on this unique project in May 2012, just 4 months before the big event.
From the very beginning, the architainment on the Sagrada Familia promised to be a great challenge. The cities of Montreal and Barcelona and the Sagrada Familia comitee had to approve the project at every stage of its development. Another constant consideration was to work in compliance with the historical aspects of the building, with all the sensibility for the content and the technical on site installation it implied.
While researching the Sagrada Familia and its architect, Antoni Gaudi, we found a series of beautiful preliminary sketches he made of his Basilica completely colored. A timeless and universal concept emerged for us from Gaudi's passion for nature and color: the Creation of the world. For the narrative structure, we chose to divide our story in 7 acts, in reference to the 7 days of the Creation.
To achieve the precise mapping that was needed to successfully highlight and animate the architectural details of the intricate facade, we used our proprietary software called X-Agora. The system allowed us to map and visualize video content on a virtual 3D model, permitting seamlessly integrated video projections, moving lights and textured lighting effects on the organic and modular façade of the Basilica. X-Agora's projection mapping functionality was used to calibrate sixteen 20K lumens projectors. Seventy lighting fixtures were also employed, half of them being spots hidden in the towers, the other half integrated with the video projection to help blend the seams between video projectors. Thanks to the never-ending construction of the Basilica, we were able to end the show by dropping 1800 LED butterflies from its cranes, for a magical final touch.
With Ode To Life, we wanted to celebrate with the Barcelonians, to demonstrate Montreal's creativity and to convey a message of joy and hope. The Mayor of Barcelona confirmed that we achieved that last goal: he mentioned, in an interview, that our show gave hope to his citizens in this time of the Catalonian crisis.
The public's reaction was unanimous: a total of 113 000 people came to see our show over the weekend. To prolong the enjoyment, we produced a video that we shared on the web. It was very successful: in the first month, the video was featured on 234 websites and viewed almost 190 000 times in 147 different countries.
For us, the process of creating the first video mapping show for the Sagrada Familia was a beautiful adventure that we will never forget.
Lighting Equipment List:
- 1 MA grandMA2 "LIGHT"
- 30 VARI LITE VL 3000 SPOT
- 12 CLAY PAKY SHARPY
- 20 MARTIN ATOMIC 3000 DMX
- 32 PAR LED 9W
- 4 SMOKE FACTORY HAZE MAKER
- 12 CLAY PAKY ALPHA BEAM 300
- 4 SMOKE FACTORY HAZE MAKER
- 2 CLAY PAKY ALPHA BEAM 1500
Video
- 8 X video projector Christie S20K 20000lm
- 8 X video projector Christie HD18 18000lm
- Optique Christie SXGA+2.8-4.5/2.6-4.1 15
- Optique Christie SXGA+4.5-7.5/HD4.1-6.9 4
- 13 servers with:
- Motherboard ASUS® P9X79 WS ATX LGA2011 X79
- CPU Intel® Core i7 3930K 6 Core 12MB 3.2GHZ
- Operating System Microsoft® Windows 7 Ultimate
- Video NVidia® GeForce GTX560 1280MB
- Memory 16GB 4X4GB DD3-2133 RAM
- Storage 2x Intel® 520 Series 60Gb 2.5in Solid State Drive
- 2x Seagate® Constellation.2™ 1TB 7200rpm 2.5in SATA
- Redundant Power Supply 2U 700W 80 Plus Power Supply
Sound System
- 24 MEYER MILO
- 4 MEYER MILO 120
- 24 MEYER MICA
- 4 MEYER 500HP
- 12 MEYER 600 HP
- 30 MEYER 700HP
- 8 MEYER JM-1P
- 6 MEYER UPQ-1P
- 4 MEYER UP-Junior
- 4 MEYER MG-3 BUMPER MILO
- 4 MEYER MG MICA BUMPER MICA OU 600HP
- 2 MEYER MPA-JM1 PLAQUE 4 JM-1P
- 2 MEYER MTG-M1 TOP GRID JM-1P
- 4 MEYER MPA UPQ-1P PLAQUE D'ACCROCHE
- 1 DIGIDESIGN VENUE
- 1 DIGIDESIGN FWX CARD
- 1 DIGIDESIGN RACK FOH
- 1 DIGIDESIGN RACK STAGE
- 1 DIGIDESIGN touret 2 BNC 70m
- 4 GALILEO
- 2 SHURE PSM900 TRANSMITTER J5
- 4 SHURE UHF-R UR4D 2 RECEIVER J5
- 4 SHURE UHF-R PSM900 P9TE-K1E 596-632Mhz
- 1 SHURE UHF-R UR-4D 2 receiver J5
- 2 SHURE UHF-R EMETTEUR MAIN BETA 87
- 2 SHURE UHF-R SHUA 8089R HELICO RIGHT
- 4 SHURE UHF-R SHUA870WB Antenne plate
Design Team:
- Executive producer: Éric Fournier
- Executive producer: Johanna Marsal
- Multimedia director: Nelson de Robles
- Scriptwriter: Mareike Lenhart
- Creative director: Sakchin Bessette
- Technology director: Dominic Audet
- Creative collaborators: Dominic Champagne et Brigitte Poupart
- Music composers: Anthony Rozankovic and Misteur Valaire
- Lighting designer: Gabriel Pontbriand
- Lighting engineer: Dominic Lemieux
- Technical director: Alexis Bluteau
- Original idea: Jacques Renaud (RENAUD - Architecture d’événements)