ADJ Lighting Transforms Post-Industrial Park Into Virtual Festival Stage For Julian Jordan Livestream

Dutch musician, DJ and producer Julian Jordan filmed his set for the 2021 DJ Mag Virtual Festival in a former industrial plant that was transformed into a festival stage for the evening. A towering metal structure, illuminated by ADJ static LED wash fixtures, provided a backdrop for the performance, while ADJ beam fixtures – positioned on the structure itself at various heights – generated piercing aerial effects which filled the night sky.

To coincide with the voting for the 2021 edition of its world-famous Top 100 DJs poll, electronic music publication DJ Mag hosted a ten-week online showcase of the world’s leading DJs across the summer. The DJ Mag Virtual Festival was broadcast across the publication’s social media channels on Saturdays and Sundays from the 24th of July to the 19th of September, ending with a performance from David Guetta who topped last year’s poll (the second time the French DJ and producer has taken the crown).

A raising star in the DJ world, Julian Jordan placed at number 71 in the 2020 Top 100 DJs list, up 22 places from the year before. Having been invited to contribute a set to the Virtual Festival, he was keen to create a performance that would help to further contribute to this rise through the ranks. To produce the project, his management reached out to Robin Johannesma and his company RJ Music Show Equipment, which has extensive experience of both production design for dance festivals and DJ tours prior to the pandemic and of pushing the boundaries of production and videography for livestreams over the past 18 months. Indeed, Julian had already recorded a set with Robin and his team in the purpose-built studio they created in their warehouse during last year’s lockdown.

For Julian Jordan’s DJ Mag livestream, RJ Music was responsible for the complete project. This included sourcing and arranging a venue, supplying the lighting and effects production, and filming the performance. The brief given to Robin for this was: ‘an outdoor location, with an industrial vibe and a lighting rig comprising lots of beams’. Based on a suggestion from a friend, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord in Germany was selected as the location for the shoot. Created on the site of an old coal and steel processing and manufacturing facility, abandoned in 1985 and transformed in 1991, this unique public park was designed in way that preserved much of the site and utilized many of its imposing industrial structures.

With both ‘outdoors’ and ‘industrial’ ticked off his list, Robin turned to ADJ’s Vizi Beam 12RX – which RJ Music Show Equipment had recently invested in – to cover the ‘beams’ requirement. Representing a major step forward in both brightness and features for a compact beam fixture, it is has recently been added to ADJ’s extremely popular Vizi Series of professional moving head luminaires as its new flagship beam model. Harnessing the power of a 260W Philips® Platinum 12R LL lamp, coupled with precision-engineered optics and a large glass front lens, this powerful lighting instrument is designed to generate piercing aerial effects.

“This was a production that we really couldn’t have done without the Vizi Beam 12RX,” explains Robin. “The output was very important, because we needed to put moving heads 50 meters up at the top of a tower and have beams that would be visible without smoke. We did have one of ADJ’s extremely powerful Entourage ‘faze’ machines running at ground level, but of course its output had blown away by the time it drifted up to that kind of height. However, the output from the 12RXs is truly insane, you could see the beams without smoke no problem and they were picked up really well on camera.”

For the shoot, Robin and his team used twelve Vizi Beam 12RXs. Six were positioned, in pairs, at various heights on the huge scaffolding structure which surrounded the imposing chimney that stood directly behind the DJ setup. Six more were placed directly on the ground, four close together directly behind Julian and the other two offset to either side. The chimney structure was illuminated in a series of vibrant colors – which changed throughout the hour-long performance – using four of ADJ’s 32 HEX Panel IP LED wash fixtures. In addition, a pair of ADJ 7P HEX IP LED par fixtures were used to illuminate Julian himself.

“The 7P HEX IP was one of the first ADJ fixtures we invested in as a company,” states Robin, “and it has proved to be very reliable. It’s an extremely robust device that we can use in any situation, including in the rain or mud, and it will always work! It’s also very versatile, which makes it a perfect fixture for our rental fleet. We can use it for everything from atmospheric event lighting – for example around a festival site – to washing a stage or dancefloor with bright colors. We’ve also used a pair of them for almost all the livestreams we’ve done throughout the pandemic [over 150 of them!] to light the DJ, using the same configuration we used for this project. We place one on each side of the DJ equipment riser, which works very well. They illuminate the performers’ faces from each side, so don’t distract them as much a light positioned directly in front would, and they don’t get in the way of wide-angle shots. The inclusion of amber LED chips also means that we can get a really nice warm white tone for key lighting and we can easily alter the color temperature if we need to, depending on the ISO settings of the cameras.”

Because time was limited between the shoot and the deadline for supplying the finished video to DJ Mag, Julian’s management asked the RJ Music Show Equipment team to mix the various different cameras live instead of using postproduction editing, which had been the serviced offered by the company’s in-house livestream studio. While Robin was more than happy to oblige, he was also keen to use a drone as part of the shoot to capture the full scale and ambiance of the location. A compromise was agreed that involved two separate takes of the performance, the first using conventional cameras – which were mixed live – and then a second filmed by drone. The two sets of video were then edited together quickly in postproduction to provide a finished film that exceeded the expectations of Julian and his management, and also seriously impressed the team at DJ Mag.

The ADJ lighting equipment was central to this success and Robin and his team are relying on ADJ equipment increasingly for a wide variety of projects, both online and in-person. Having initially invested in 7P HEX IP pars as well as Encore FR50Z and Encore FR150Z LED-powered Fresnels before the pandemic, the company made a significant investment at the beginning of this summer that expanded their stock of ADJ static wash fixtures as well as adding two different automated luminaire models. The purchase comprised of 16 x Vizi Beam 12RX and 8 x Vizi Wash Z19 moving heads as well as 24 x 7P HEX IP and 8 x 32 HEX Panel IP static wash fixtures. As pandemic restrictions are lifted and business returns to normal, the company also plans further investment, both to expand their stock of their existing fixture types and to add additional models. The reason for this commitment to the ADJ brand is a combination of service, reliability, and product range.

“ADJ’s after sales and technical support is next level,” enthuses Robin, “which is really important for us. I have a very good relationship with my account manager, Steven, and my experience with ADJ’s technical team has also been really good. The equipment is well built and reliable, but if I do ever have any problems, I know I’ll be looked after. Another reason for choosing ADJ was the product range; they have everything we need – with the features and quality we want – at a price that is right for us. We don’t know of another brand that can meet all our wishes across all the different types of products we need.”