Smallfoot Village was a large-scale, pop-up installation atm the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood, California that was constructed to advertise the movie Smallfoot, which opened on September 28, 2018. This free event allowed visitors to enter the world of the feature film via a 40-minute, immersive journey through a two-level Yeti village. Part of the village was up above the clouds, and guests could roam the clouds, enter a snow room, and move through other environments found in the movie. They then descended through the clouds on a slide into the Smallfoot town, where they could sing karaoke in a tavern, create their own art in the Yeti Museum, and play in the Yeti or Not Arcade. Gantom Lighting & Controls provided some of the lighting for this unique and highly effective marketing project.
THE CHALLENGE
Sohail Najafi of Stories Illuminated was tasked with recre- ating the vibrant, visual, dynamic scenes within the film and
helping the production team bring them to life in the real world.
No Visible Production—No Fixtures, No Wiring
“I was challenged with lighting a live karaoke stage while still creating a beautiful image that was true to the scene
representation in the movie—that is, no visible production, no fixtures, no wiring. We had to achieve this invisibility throughout Smallfoot Village,” Najani explained. “Having the Gantom products was the only way we could have possibly done this because I was able to use Gantom floods and IQXs to create beautiful texture, and people didn’t even see where this is coming from. When I pointed it out to them, and they looked up, they were almost in disbelief. They’d say, ‘That little thing is doing this?’”
“Producers, creative directors, and creative designers often decide to remove an effect if it can’t be done inconspicuous ly. They don’t want to break the immersion in the scene,” the explained.
Creating the Seamless, Luminous Lighting of Animation in a Real Environment
“In the Karaoke Bar, I had a legitimate, to-scale, intimate environment and I needed to provide key light for the stage and texture and highlight around the room while not breaking the immersion of people walking into the same bar that appears in the movie. In real life, there’s often theatrical lighting in a bar, but, because this one was scaled down, I couldn’t use traditional fixtures. It would feel like we were on a set rather than in a scene in a movie. In the movie, the stage is lit beautifully, but, of course, you don’t see any lights because it’s animation. The pure, rich environmentsm in animation is one of the reasons animation has become such a staple in the industry,” he pointed out. “You can do whatever you want with the lighting. In the real world, how- ever, if want to create that type of richness and you’re not in a big studio, you don’t have the physical space to put the logistics in to get those effects. With the Gantom products, I didn’t have to make any comprises. In the karaoke bar, there was a stage that’s a four-by-eight platform, and I had key light, highside texture, back light, and color fill, and there were no cabling or fixtures. The production designer walked in, looked at the light, said it looked great, and walked out.”
In the arts and crafts room, there was a low ceiling and objects on the walls that Najani wanted to highlight. “I was able to hide the fixtures on the backs of rafters and supports. I was able to hit objects on the wall from two sides with a textured key light, making it ten times richer than if I just hit it with a flood.”
Gantom Fixtures Used in Smallfoot Village
Gantom DMX Precision DMX
Gantom iQx Pro Cable G8 Distribution Box
Programming the Gantom Fixtures
Vincent Sanchez, the Associate Designer at Stories Illuminated, talked about the process of programming the Gantom products. “To recreate the world of Smallfoot, the movie, which is dynamic, bright, and colorful, we knew we needed lots of LEDs to give us that fine control of colors and ability to layer lights. It took us about two weeks to do all the fabrication. There was quite a bit of construction on site, such as the rafters and supports. We had to design DMX universes based on where everything was going. We had three trusses in the air, and each one had its own universe. We had fixtures on the ground and in the tunnel that were ground-mounted. Outside there was façade lighting, which was all one universe,” he explained.
Programming Challenges
We asked Sanchez to talk about his biggest challenge in programming the lighting.
“The biggest challenge was having everything in its own building—the Karaoke Bar, the Arts and Crafts room, and so on. I had to preprogram things with spaces assigned but not assign the fixtures. When we were on site, we updated groups and spaces so I could assign the channels,” he explained.
Technology that Drives the Art and is Driven by the Art
In closing, Najani commented, “My passion for design started in technology, so when I’m given tools that I can employ to create art, that’s where I get my inspiration. The partnership with Gantom has been great, because there’s a true passion for the technology to drive the art, to be driven by the art, and to work in tandem with the art. It makes things you traditionally couldn’t do possible. As a result, you’re able to open up your mind and create things that either haven’t been created before or haven’t been created in that manner. It’s a wonderful feeling.”
