First Festival of Lights, San Francisco

San Francisco’s first Festival of Lights relies on Modulo Pi’s media servers

On December 3-12, 2021, the city of San Francisco hosted its first light festival. Produced by Downtown SF and made in partnership with A3 Visual, Let’s Glow SF offered state-of-the-art projection mapping onto several iconic buildings located in San Francisco’s Financial District, including the Pacific Stock Exchange, Hyatt Regency, 345 California and One Bush Plaza.

A3 Visual, a cutting-edge video mapping company, was contracted for the project, which turns out to be the largest holiday projection mapping event in the United States.
To deliver a bright projection mapping on the four different buildings, A3 Visual relied on 18 x Panasonic PT-RQ35K video-projectors, and 6 x Modulo Player and Modulo Kinetic media servers by Modulo Pi.

To prepare the video mapping, the team at A3 Visual could rely on the 3D projection study tools embedded in Modulo Kinetic.

The Modulo Player and Modulo Kinetic media servers were instrumental in the warping process. Through the exclusive X-map function, the projectors’ outputs were easily warped to perfectly map the buildings shapes.
For the fine tuning, operators used the Warp Remote application, a companion app by Modulo Pi designed to handle multi-projector edge blending and warping from a PC or laptop. “On many of the show sites, we had to hide the servers in tucked away locations and were able to fine tune and adjust the mapping wirelessly through our laptops” explains Sean Mason, Chief Technology Officer at A3 Visual. “Being fully mobile to map is such a freeing experience and an incredibly valuable tool for us.”

To simplify the management of the 4 different locations during the 10-day festival, A3 Visual used the automation capabilities available in Modulo Player and Modulo Kinetic. “The projectors were networked and controlled by the servers and turned on and off every night, played the show at the exact right times”, says Mason. “It saved us lots of labor since we were able to have just a few people onsite for the 10 days of show.”

Let’s Glow SF was attended by 36.000 people who could enjoy the 5-12 minute shows on each building created by local and international artists and projected each night between 5:30pm and 10:00pm.
The video mapping contributed to magnify and animate the city’s financial district. For that matter, A3 Visual was given a Certificate of Honor by Mayor London Breed for beautifying the city and assisting with reemergence and economic development.

The festival will come back in 2022, with A3 Visual in charge of the technical production.

Let’s Glow 2021 from A3 Visual.

Credits:
Production: Downtown SF
Video mapping: A3 Visual

Hyatt Embarcadero:
Artists: Mindscape Studio, Duncan Rogoff
Music: Mindscape Studio, Nick Andre

One Bush Plaza:
Artists: Spectre Lab, Ian Ross, Amanda Lynn, Sean Capone, Pixel n’Pepper
Music: Spectre Lab, Pixel n’Pepper, Nick Andre

Stock Exchange:
Artist & music: Spectre Lab

555 California:
Artists: Light Harvest, Sydney Bouaniche
Music: Light Harvest, Nick Andre