Foresta Lumina
Agency
Moment Factory
Practice Area
Client
Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook
Industry
Project Vision
How do you transform a quiet woodland park into a fantastical, fun, and family-friendly nighttime destination? The marketing team at eastern Quebec’s Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook asked Moment Factory (Montreal) to put their park on the tourist map by creating an experience that visitors wouldn’t forget.
The Moment Factory looked at the park’s offer—hiking trails, beautiful natural surroundings, and the world’s longest suspended foot bridge, to name a few—and set to work creating a story around it. Inspired by the natural landscape and by the local legends of Coaticook, they created Foresta Lumina, an immersive nighttime attraction that uses sound, light, and video projection to bring magic to life along a 1.2-mile walking path.
From the moment visitors pass through Foresta Lumina’s mysterious, misty portal, they are plunged into a world where the magical seems entirely possible. Moment Factory introduced the show’s cast of seven mythical characters via giant illuminated laser-cut manuscripts. A vocabulary of mysterious runes ties together different elements of an interactive storyline that draws on universal symbols like fairies and wishing wells as well as local native legends like the monstrous Wendigo.
Moment Factory used a range of techniques—from RGB illumination of custom prints to video mapping and thousands of hand-wrapped LEDs—to create an evocative environment that speaks to young and old alike. The team reinforced visual effects with an artful original soundtrack, creating a completely immersive experience.
More accustomed to working in cities, the Moment Factory team had to create an experience that respected the pristine natural setting, so daytime visitors could still enjoy the landscape. The experience also needed to be removable for the harsh winter season. Moment Factory designed, fabricated, installed, and weatherproofed every element of the project, from the script and storyline to die-cut metal manuscripts to mysterious fairies and demons hiding in the trees. The team also worked closely with the park’s marketing team to help develop promotional materials and ensure a strong brand for the attraction.
The result was Quebec’s success of the summer. Foresta Lumina surpassed every metric set for its success, with two-hour lineups for admission, ten times the attendance the park had forecast, and a revitalized brand for the park and the town. As the client had hoped, local hotels and restaurants reported huge increases in evening business and overnight stays, and the project was featured in regional, national, and international media. A 2015 version of the fantasy adventure debuts this summer.
Project Details
A transformative experience utilizing light and projection changes a natural environment, a woodland park, into a nighttime theater. Light, video projection, motion, and sound combine to create an immersive experience. Animating local myths through interactive storylines combines nature and technology in new ways. Credit goes to the design team, which took a site-specific hands-on approach to the execution.
This is one enchanted forest the whole family will enjoy. The immersive use of technology carefully disappears within a relatively hostile environment and the experience is certainly one to remember.
Design Team
Moment Factory
Design Firm
Moment Factory
Project Area
41,820,000 sq ft
Project Budget
$1,000,000 CDN
Consultants
Patricia Ruel (scenography), Marie-Eve Pageau (lighting design), Vincent Letellier (music), Dany Beaudoin (technical direction)
Fabricators
Moment Factory, Alco Néon, Softbox, Show Devant