How do you make ticket sales cool? You bring in Moment Factory – a hot design studio that specializes in interactive installations and sets.
La Vitrine is a local ticket hub in Montreal. It recently moved into new digs at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Street and Saint-Laurent Boulevard – right in the heart of the entertainment district. The goal with the new high traffic location was to engage new and younger audiences, pull tourists in off the street and integrate social media sharing. La Vitrine aims to be a beacon of culture in Montreal where everyone goes to get tickets, explains Eric Fournier, partner and executive producer, Moment Factory.
“They really wanted to create a very animated centre,” he says. So Moment Factory created a two-storey interactive digital sculpture as the focal point of the very large space.
Moment Factory has been building an international reputation for innovative projects for years. The team created a studio for French Quebec-based game show Le Tricheur where the entire stage is a touchable and interactive screen for participants, moving and reacting to game play, and, recently, the team completed Madonna’s video show for her Super Bowl half-time number, to media accolades.
La Vitrine boasts a six-metre-high ceiling, is surrounded by windows and has concrete floors. So Moment Factory put a one-metre in diametre column in the middle of the room, constructed with hundreds of LED lights that travel all the way to the ceiling. Five flat LED screens protrude from the column and curve around the ceiling, and flat touch-screens surround the base of the column to provide visitors the option of looking up their intended shows.
La Vitrine isn’t meant to compete with its online presence, rather the physical location is intended to create an engaging and energetic atmosphere that draws passersby and encourages people to see a show.
The structure serves two purposes, says Fournier. First, it can act as a purely informational vehicle, with the touch-screens displaying the locations of plays and concerts on a city map. Events can be filtered by date, location and genre, while the show descriptions can be shared over social media channels or email.
But the real meat-and-potatoes of the display comes from light-show loops Moment Factory created. Working with X-Agora technology, the light shows, displayed on the column and ceiling screens, change based on the time of day and the mood the team is trying to set. For example, one loop tells the story of going to a show at night, says Julie Armstrong-Boileau, communication head, Moment Factory. All of which creates great fodder for viewers to share via pics with their social media network (visit Strategyonline.ca to see a video).
Fournier says this is just the start for the La Vitrine piece and that the team hopes to introduce more interactivity into the installation.
For an example of what Moment Factory is capable of, consider its holiday installation for Canadian Tire, which saw a Christmas tree erected in Toronto’s Union Station, with lights powered by social media. As people across the world used keywords such as “Christmas” and “snowflake” in their posts, the lights lit up and changed colour. Fournier says it would be completely possible for the light show at La Vitrine to be powered by tweets from the public or even applause in the theatres.
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