On July 4, onlookers in Atlantic City watched with awe as Boardwalk Hall cracked, shuddered, then crumbled to the ground. Then, somehow, the hall erupted in rainbow-colored bricks that appeared to move. It was all an illusion! The historic building remained intact.

It was just part of a show, albeit a very intricate one, that combined light, architecture, video, sound, and even 3-D mapping. They call the process architectural video mapping, and while it isn’t the only kind of show Moment Factory puts on – they made headlines for their visual effects in Madonna's half-time show at this year's Super Bowl – it’s their hallmark.

To produce the Boardwalk Hall display they called "Duality," the Atlantic City Alliance turned Moment Factory loose on the windows and stone columns of the 83-year-old national historic landmark. "To have that creative liberty, it got everybody on the team really inspired," says Nelson de Robles, multimedia director for Moment Factory.

DUALITY - Atlantic City Sound and Light Show - July 4th from Moment Factory on Vimeo.

To create Duality, Moment Factory first sent a team to take a 3-D scan of Boardwalk Hall. From that, they made two models: one computer model on a 3-D engine similar to those used in videogames; and one physical model that stood 18 inches tall.

The first step in Moment Factory's creative process was to come up with a story they wanted to tell. They decided to capture Atlantic City's dual personalities – past and present – and visualize them working together. (Duality, get it?) Not everyone will see it that way; the show is intentionally open to interpretation.

"If you see it just one time, it's very colorful, it’s very eye-candy, the 3-D effects are really great," says de Robles. "But then if you see it two, three times, then you're going to understand the storytelling that is behind the duality of the two personalities, the encounter of the two, how they try to communicate, and when they achieve that communication how they do great things together."

After digitally modeling the storyboard and testing it on the mini-Boardwalk Hall, Montreal-based Moment Factory took the show to Atlantic City. Over two weeks, team members installed 12 projectors, each shining with 20,000 lumens, and 12 servers to run them. With four projectors on a pair of towers in front of the building, and the rest mounted on it, there were still spots where they didn’t shine, so the team included hundreds of LED fixtures that blend seamlessly into the show. To that they added 15 surround-sound speakers and five subwoofers to broadcast an original score. The price for such an elaborate setup was in the millions; even the windows were covered with a special mesh fabric to keep the image sharp.

"People were clapping and screaming, we had goose bumps from the reaction of the public," says de Robles. "It was great. There were even a couple of 4-year-old kids that were crying because they thought that the crumbling of the building was for real."

Moment Factory is only sharing a couple of minutes of the 8-and-a-half-minute show. The purpose, after all, is to drive Atlantic City tourism. The permanent installation will play twice an hour, every night.

What's next for these wizards of light? Head of communications Julie Armstrong-Boileau said the company is pitching a project to illuminate the Eiffel Tower. Imagine the Parisian gasps while watching their tower crumble – quelle horreur!

See their other work, including photos of Madonna's MDNA tour and Jay-Z's Carnegie Hall concert at their webpage.

Atlantic City, NJ: Atlantic City Alliance July 4th Events Fireworks, concert and Light show at Historic Boardwalk Hall l in Atlantic City , NJ on Wednesday July 4, 2012 Photo by: Tom Briglia/PhotoGraphics Boardwalk Hall with minimal effects.

Photos courtesy of Moment Factory

A previous version of this story referred to the 3-D modeling software as proprietary. We apologize for the error.