Reverze ‘enveloped the huge crowd with its sights and sounds’
Belgium - Measuring 88m long and 132m wide, with a roof spanning 11,600 m², the Sportpaleis in Antwerp is an impressive structure. But, for one weekend this September the big building and the neighbouring Lotto Arena melted into intimate spaces of sound and light for Reverze, the hardstyle music festival produced by Bass Events.
Celebrating this ultra-intense form of electronic music that was born in Benelux, Reverze ‘radiated immersive energy that defied notions of space and time as it enveloped the huge crowd with its sights and sounds’.
Contributing to this experience was a series of transformative lightshows run by designer and programmer Leon Driessen of LD Company with help from two ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M consoles with Stadium Wings. (A third MQ500M was held in reserve, but never used).
Featuring 1017 lighting fixtures and 36,225 channels spread over 117 universes run through sACN and ArtNet, the lightshows, which supported performances by 14 different artists, ‘filled the entire venue with massive waves of visual energy’.
Driessen described the vision behind the visuals: “The looks mainly have to do with how the show is programmed,” he said. “A show file will often be divided by lamp type, but we did the opposite. We made combinations of lamp types and looks that were related to color bumps, looks, and movements. A small example of this is how we triggered an odd/even bump and had everything go along with it. Think of the grouping for strobes / washes / movements etcetera, so that any addition you make with a type of lamp enhances the look because they are uniform on the odd/even bump.”
Driessen credits the success at Reverze to his team, which included ALD and programmer Bart Stofmeel, and Jeroen Claes for lasers, along with Dewico for pyro, Axiom for production design, APEXX for lighting production, Last Blast Show Creations for show design and Eyesupply for video.
The design team ran the shows with two operators working at the same time to allow quick transitions to different looks and accents. One of the consoles and wing were used for moving light, while the other was used for static light and specials. The consoles were run in session using MagicQ’s Net-Sessions.
Driessen was impressed with how the new MagicQ MQ500M facilitated his work at the venue. He was especially pleased with how the console made it faster and easier to program. “The new Timeline feature was fantastic for this production,” he said. “Being able to play audio directly linked to cues in cue list / timeline makes the programming process much faster. In addition, we first imported cues from reaper into the timeline.”

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