Music

A Q&A with Montreal's Moment Factory, the group behind Arcade Fire's glowing "orbs" at Coachella

by Nicole Villeneuve

When 1,600 glowing inflatable balls were released on the Coachella crowd during Arcade Fire’s performance of “Wake Up” last month, a moment was made. It was a festival highlight, one where videos quickly made their way widely around the web—the sight of all those individually programmed and lit-up orbs, a kaleidoscope of colours being batted around by thousands, was something to be seen, and, better still something to be considered. This wasn’t your standard Flaming Lips balloon drop.

As part of this year’s festival, a collaborative creative endeavour called the Creators Project transformed sets by Interpol, Animal Collective, and yes, Arcade Fire, into groundbreaking visual experiences; Montreal’s Moment Factory were tapped to help bring Arcade Fire’s balls to life. Founded in 2001, the company has succeeded in merging art and technology to create stunning interactive street-level installations, exhibits, and stage shows for clients such as Celine Dion, Cirque Du Soleil, and Nine Inch Nails on their elaborately designed 2008 Lights In the Sky tour.

“That helped us gain a good reputation in the show business world,” Moment Factory’s Executive Producer Eric Fournier says. When Chris Milk, a director who had worked with Arcade Fire on their interactive music video “The Wilderness Downtown,” needed his vision for the band’s Coachella set realized, he called Moment Factory. “Our name is in the world of those that want to create something special with their audience,” Fournier says. We spoke with him on the phone from L.A. on a family holiday about manufacturing Arcade Fire’s big moment.

AUX: Can you tell us a bit of the company’s history? What’s your background?

Eric Fournier, Executive Producer: Well I was at Cirque du Soleil. I was a client of theirs. Moment Factory was one of my suppliers, so that’s how I got to know them as they were really helpful in trying to transform some sets into virtual sets to replicate the worlds of Cirque at the time. That’s how I got to know the founders, who are my partners now, Sakchin Bessette and Dominic Audet.

How did you come to work with the Creators Project and Coachella this year?

It goes back a bit in history with Moment Factory and some of the projects that we’ve done in the past that have gotten lots of reviews. The most obvious one is the work we’ve done with Nine Inch Nails two years ago, which was voted one of the ten best ever in the world of rock and roll. And then this year we just finalized the video production for Celine Dion’s new show in Vegas. We were approached by the folks at Radical Media, who were doing work with Chris Milk on Arcade Fire’s show at Coachella. They had heard about us from some of the work we’d done, so that’s how we got approached. They wanted to find a way to make this idea of throwing balls—big, inflatable balls—in public happen.

Did the final product represent your initial vision?

Oh, yeah. It was a pretty tough endeavour as we were dealing with an open-air situation in a large-scale festival. So having to deal with the number of stakeholders here, the operators on site, the band, the crews—the regulations are so tough, that in order to get this going both on the technical side and on the artistic side, we needed to make sure that this would be done in a very rigourous way. It was not as simple as it looked when it was done. Think about each balloon being independent with their own system, think about the 1,600 balloons that need to be inflated and thrown into an audiences, and think about the coordination of all of this with the local crews and the technical staff and the Coachella people.

From conceptual beginning to execution, how long did it take?

It was fast tracked. I’m trying to remember when we first got the go-ahead. I think it was two months? Or six weeks all in all? That was a pretty dangerous endeavour! That’s part of our reputation also. When we take something, we deliver, and when we decided we would take it, we knew it was feasible. We just needed to get the right people to work on it.

I assume every project is different, but how long in comparison did this one take compared to another one?

For us, everything that concerns doing integration and light performances, and interaction with the band and artist is always of a significant magnitude. We’ve learned to work on very intense production situation with Cirque de Soleil. That’s been part of the DNA of the company since its inception. Dealing with large-scale project with significant risk is something that makes our day-to-day life. So you can think about Cirque de Soleil as being the training ground.

Did you have any specific inspiration for the Arcade Fire performance?

The multimedia director on this project worked with Chris Milk, and they decided on the different sounds and shapes and movements that they wanted to have with light to accompany the band. So I know they worked intensively during the last three, four days before the shows with the band, to make sure that everybody was in sync. It was just to make it so that people would react positively. What Arcade Fire was all about, the idea, was to create something cool, nice, and playful. Not going into radical disco kind of theme (laughs).

Were you on site for the performance?

I wasn’t there, no. Part of the issue attached to that is obviously there was limited access. So we had a whole crew there. Only those people that were required were there. We needed to concentrate staff to a minimum.

So Moment Factory handles both the artistic and the technological side of the projects?

That’s how we position ourselves. It’s all about the experiences, and finding the way of merging the artistic and the technology to create something special. So in essence, every project will have these two components integrated to do something magic.

A big part of your work seems to be interactivity.

Yes. As we evolve with new technology and the use of multimedia, the youngsters that are used to playing with video games and so on are asking for these kinds of tools now. Everything is turning interactive, and more of a game than just looking at cool projections. So we launched into interactive about six or seven years ago to help on the sets with artists. But we gradually moved into more individual interactivity.

How many projects are on the go at once, usually?

It’s about thirty projects we run.

You must work with a huge team.

We like to refer to our team as being ‘multi.’ Multi meaning that we have in-house designers, in-house graphics, in-house programmers, in-house lighting designers. What makes Moment Factory unique and different is that we have within our company a pretty diversified set of skills. So that we can address these needs. We have a team that works on these interactive elements, and they’re quite a cool bunch of people that have come from the videogame industry and that now can apply some of these tricks to our world.

Is there anything coming up that you’re able to share?

We’re pretty busy working on new installations around Montreal, at the Granby Zoo. They’re implementing a new exhibit on the deep sea. So we’re transforming one of their experiences into a deep-sea experience using video and so on. Lots of stuff! There might be some stuff in Toronto pretty soon for some international brands that want to launch a new project. I can’t give you more details [on that] for now! And there’s some stuff going on in Vancouver with the Canucks. We’ve got the interactive experiences over there.

Anything special planned for a Stanley Cup victory?

Let’s hope so! It’s all about [creating] that fanbase, and get to know more about their club, their team, the different players. We’ve done something for the Montreal Canadians, too.

Did you notice that some of the balls from the Arcade Fire set are for sale on eBay?

Yeah! I mean, we weren’t surprised by that, but that has to do with the Arcade Fire reputation. Today, everything goes viral, so we weren’t surprised that they’re on eBay.

The starting bid on one was almost $900 U.S.

Nothing surprises me anymore. What people lived that night, is unique, and I’m just now following up a bit what’s been written about it, and people are creating some kind of nostalgia. It’s cool. I’m very happy about that. It’s all about memorable experiences. What we like is when people say to their friends and family ‘you had to be there.’ People begin to say that, we’ve done our job. And that’s where I think we want to continue building this company.