Page 343 - Protec PR Book Volume 2

FEATURES: LIVE
Tying together Tomorrowland
Uniting local EDM lovers with 400,000 others across the world making up the 2018 Tomorrowland Festival was the challenge for Protec, discovers Simon Luckhurst
WHEN TOMORROWLAND RETURNED TO THE FESTIVAL
circuit for its 2018 edition recently, ambitions and expectations were high. Already one of the largest of its
kind across the world, Tomorrowland is also what’s been termed a live-stream festival. That is, in addition to the tens of thousands of revellers flanking the main stage in Belgium, over 400,000 EDM lovers spread across seven venues in Italy, Malta, Spain, Taiwan, Mexico, Lebanon and the UAE could also enjoy the enviable line-up of DJs gracing the main stage in Belgium. EDM lovers could ‘Unite with Tomorrowland’ through shared AVL technology.
Abu Dhabi’s du Forum on Yas Island served as the location for the UAE satellite site, with a packed out audience filling the space for 12 hours of non-stop EDM music. They weren’t just left staring at a big screen, however – the event featured live local and international DJs including Lucas & Steve, SmokinGroove, Marcus Santoro, Regi, Barry Fore, Omar Basaad, D.O.D. and Ummet Ozcan.
Protec was called on by Envie Events to deliver audio, lighting, video, scenic, staging and rigging solutions for what the company describes in its own words as ‘probably the most elaborate festival on earth’. From a technical standpoint, truly uniting the audience with the main arena in Belgium meant going far beyond simply sharing a video feed. Dazzling special effects in du Forum were synchronised with the main show in Belgium. Party-goers got the opportunity to dance in real-time to renowned international DJs, 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 seven outreach venues shared an almost identical visual as well as audio experience.
How does one go about synchronising a complex lighting show across multiple venues, some of which are on the other side of the globe?
Protec had handled production of the Dubai satellite site
for the festival’s outreach edition last year. Yet as Protec’s project manager Pieter Smuts recalls, ‘the show in Abu Dhabi was almost a breeze – which was fantastic because the heat
Both lighting and audio synced across the seven outreach venues
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.’
The saving grace for Protec was that this year’s event occupied a much smaller venue than the Dubai one last year, despite requiring a far more complicated stage lighting setup.
‘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,’ explains Abigail Bates, who headed up Protec’s lighting crew. ‘This 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
The hangs deployed comprised 18 K2 per side
66 PRO AVL MEA November–December 2018
PAME Pg66-67 Tomorrow Land.indd 66 10/10/2018 09:15