Beyond wonderland california
This year marked the tenth anniversary of Electric Forest, and a return after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. Synchronising more than 200GB of show content and then updating the servers when guest visuals were added throughout the weekend was seamless and seriously quick,” he adds. “This was the first project whereby I was able to utilise MediaManager sync across a 10GB network. Harris managed the incoming visual content using Hippotizer MediaManager and says the Tierra+ MK2 media servers continued to playback without any noticeable change in quality even while importing or syncing new content in a variety of shapes, sizes and codecs. The servers ran flawlessly, often in very hot and dusty conditions!” In addition, Hippotizer VideoMapper allows us to output to non-standard configurations of LED screens across multiple outputs we had differing sized DJ booths for different acts, which can easily be dealt with by quickly and easily creating an alternate mapping to suit. “Hippotizer Zookeeper allows me to build an interface to suit the needs of the project, access to all the controls I need as well as performance information across both main and backup servers. “I’m often asked that age old question that begins with ‘can you just…’ and I’m confident in being able to do what is asked of me when I have such a multitude of real time functionality at my fingertips. “Hippotizer remains the ultimate video toolbox for me, and its flexibility is the ideal solution for running house video on festival stages,” he says. Harris notes that one of the biggest challenges was not only creating visuals for such a huge canvas, but also receiving content from a variety of performers that arrived in differing formats and dimensions. We also wanted to utilise Hippotizer’s X-Fade mode across all mixes to maintain seamless transitions between content and scenic overlays.” “We needed the system to run multiple layers of 7K content mapped to two 3840 x 2160 outputs in addition to scenic overlays and any additional content supplied by the performer. “We specified Tierra+ MK2 due to its power,” Harris continues. They used a range of third-party control equipment via Hippotizer’s multi-controller component to control two Tierra+ MK2 servers – one as main and one as backup – which were supplied by Screenworks NEP and sub-rented from DMDs7udios. Harris and the team created the content in Cinema4D, Octane and Redshift and sequenced in Adobe AfterEffects and Premiere. In the evening and into the night we introduced more diverse themes including an art nouveau greenhouse structure, lush trees, growing flowers, animated branches and vegetation, natural kaleidoscopes, growing roots, waterfalls and graphic patterns.” “Their initial brief was to focus on the Sherwood Elephant stained glass styling, which was the main content used throughout the day.
“Creative briefs from Leisure Expert Group are second to none as their attention to detail and overarching themes are crystal clear,” says Observatory’s director of production, Simon Harris. The team was commissioned by Electric Forest organisers Insomniac events and Leisure Expert Group, on the back of a successful visuals collaboration on the Beyond Wonderland festival in Southern California earlier this year. Observatory’s brief was to create the scenic visual content for the Sherwood Court stage’s proscenium arch LED screens, and the upstage LED screen when there wasn’t a guest VJ or content supplied with the performer.
Notable on the Sherwood Court stage were US ‘heaven trap’ DJ duo Slander, bass-heavy Mersiv, and ‘chillwave’ pioneer Toto y Moi. On the Sherwood Court stage, a massive 7056 x 2864 canvas of LED screens made up of 180m 2 of Roe MC7 and 150m 2 of YesTech MG7 featured mind-blowing visuals created by Observatory and powered by Hippotizer Tierra+ MK2 media servers. USA – Michigan’s much-anticipated Electric Forest Festival returned for 2022 with an expertly curated line-up of EDM stars, jam bands, dubstep heroes and multiple other genres.