Page 340 - Protec PR Book Volume 2

Protec: Delivers Another Successful ‘UNITE With Tomorrowland’
Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), in partnership with Dubai-based producer, organiser and promoter, Envie Events, connected more than 400,000 music lovers on Saturday July 28th, as revellers in du Forum, Yas Island were linked up via a live satellite connection to Belgium and beyond when the much-anticipated global EDM festival UNITE With Tomorrowland returned to the UAE.
Six other locations across the globe were also connected to the Tomorrowland main stage in Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Spain, Taiwan, Mexico and Lebanon also enjoying the world-renowned dance extravaganza. Envie Events filled up the du Forum on Yas Island with thousands of revellers from 2pm – 2am, as the event was linked up live via satellite to the Tomorrowland mainstage in Belgium as well as to the other venues across the world. The Abu Dhabi event featured live local and international DJs including the duo Lucas & Steve, SmokinGroove, Marcus Santoro, Regi, Barry Fore, Omar Basaad, D.O.D and Ummet Ozcan.
Headlining this year’s line-up in the capital, ‘Lucas and Steve’ performed their hit club collaborations ‘Summer on You’ and ‘These Heights’, which have received millions of views online to date. For these travelling artists, the crowds in UAE were fantastic.
“We noticed immediately the huge energy that everybody was giving during the show,” says Lucas de Wert.
“We heard a lot of stories about the Middle East and it’s really growing music-wise,” Steven Jansen added, “EDM is becoming the next big thing and that’s what we saw.”
Dazzling special effects in du Forum were synchronised with the show in Belgium to create an exciting atmosphere which highlighted the unique global connection. Party-goers got the opportunity to dance in real time to the tunes of renowned international DJ’s including Afrojack, Armin van Buuren, Dmitri Vegas and Like Mike via the live satellite connection. This also involved remote control of lighting to ensure each of the 7 venues shared an almost identical visual as well as audio experience.
Protec were called on by Envie Events to deliver audio, lighting, video, scenic, staging and rigging solutions for what can only be described as probably the most elaborate festival on earth. Having successfully delivered the technical production for the festival held in Dubai in 2017, Protec’s project manager Pieter Smuts said, “the show in Abu Dhabi was almost a breeze – which was fantastic because the heat of the UAE summer can really put
a lot of pressure on the crew as temperatures hover in the high 40s. As the theme for Abu Dhabi was the same as the one in Dubai, it made it a lot easier for us as we already knew the challenges we could have potentially faced.”
Abigail Bates, heading up Protec’s lighting crew, said: “The major difference for lighting was that the venue was smaller than last year. This meant that we didn’t need to implement a large amount of audience lighting, as we did last year, because the audience area was not as spacious. Not having to install a large amount of audience lighting also made the install slightly easier, as it meant that we could concentrate all our efforts on rigging the fixtures into the stage set, which is the most complex and time consuming part of the lighting rig.”
When asked about the challenges she faced, Bates explained, “The main challenge for lighting on Tomorrowland, in both years that we have done it, has been the physical rigging of the fixtures. For every fixture, and there are around 80 fixtures attached to the stage façade, firstly the exact position
of the fixture needs to be determined. It is important to be as precise as possible when determining this because the lighting/stage design has to look the same as the other UNITE events, and a fixture or group of fixtures rigged in the wrong place would be very noticeable when the live stream footage is playing from the other countries. Once the position for the fixture has been determined, a hole has to be made in the set, a pipe put through this hole, and then a rigging structure installed on the back of the set to hold this pipe in place. This whole process means that for every fixture, at least 4 lighting crew and 1 staging technician is needed.”