While Music Festivals are pretty much a done deal for the rest of 2020 at the least, organizers are beginning to realize that they need to think outside the box.
And this past weekend, Tomorrowland did just that and stood through to their promise of showcasing a virtual festival like never seen before.
The debut edition of Tomorrowland Around The World, the digital festival, was hosted on what they called the island of Pāpiliōnem. Upon entering the festival, attendees were transported to this 3D island where they could browse and explore the different stages, some familiar and some newer ones.
The unique and first of its kind festival drew over a million viewers from around the world. Viewers tuned in from Japan to Mexico and India to Iceland, all uniting on the magical island of Pāpiliōnem.
A question that came up as to how the festival pulled off this digital extravaganza, Tomorrowland revealed some details which break it down. 60 of the world’s top DJ’s performed across the 8 festival stages and this mean feat was put together by shotting the sets in 4 green screen studios across the world. The studios were set up in Boom (Belgium), Los Angeles (USA), Sao Paolo (Brazil), and Sydney (Australia) and each artist recorded their sets at one of these studios. The exact same full-sized DJ booth was built in each of those 4 studios and artists like David Guetta, Martin Garrix, Eric Prydz, and many more.
There were multiple angles shot from a whopping 38 cameras which allowed for the stunning shots we saw through the live-streamed performances. The hyper-real performances not only showed a generated crowd but also had simulated crowds which clapped along, sang along and cheered through the performances.
In certain ways, the digital counterpart outdid the original festival! The digital 3D environment had 10 times more Polygons and lights compared to a modern computer game. The 750 virtual lamps per stage were all drawn by hand. They even went on to create 32,000 virtual plants and trees for each outdoor stage on the 16 square kilometre surface. They did also throw in generous amounts of lasers, fireworks and special effects galore.
Doing their bit for the environment, recycled PET cups collected at Tomorrowland 2019 were used by TML by Tomorrowland, the fashion label behind Tomorrowland. Together with the Belgian based startup Yuma Labs, they have designed 3D printed sunglasses, crafted from 100% recycled plastic of which 50% recycled PET cups collected at Tomorrowland 2019.
All attendees who bought weekend tickets will be able to access individual DJ sets for two weeks from July 29 onwards. If you were someone who missed out, one can buy tickets for the Relive platform for €12.50 on tomorrowland.com.
With ID’s and new music generously sprinkled through most sets, and some absolutely spectacular levels of production, Tomorrowland showed that a virtual music festival can definitely be done right and is far from a sombre affair.
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