André Hazes holds a special place in the hearts of Dutch music fans. When the singer died, back in 2004, a crowd of 48,000 attended a memorial ceremony in his honour at the Amsterdam Arena. Over eight million viewers tuned into the event, broadcast live on Dutch and Belgian television. He was, and remains, a very big deal.
Holland Zingt Hazes – Holland Sings Hazes – is a series of concerts that celebrates the life of Hazes and it continues to grow in size and ambition. The 2018 series -commissioned by Medialane and Sightline Productions– was held in Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome, and Tenfeet worked with the creative director Lars Gorter of Momental, to technically go where Green Hippo and Notch, as well as Tenfeet had never gone before.
📸Holland Zingt Hazes Show 2018, photo credit: Tenfeet
The goal here was a hyper-realistic street, down to even accurate architectural touches. Moreover, the show took the audience through a year’s four seasons and holidays, so the street scenes had to change in tandem with journey. Pre-show, Tenfeet experimented to ensure the most realistic look, tweaking Notch to shine with the maximum capabilities of its pair of Hippotizer Montane+ Media Servers. Both of the Montane+ Media Servers were rendering Notch Blocks and playing back the video content, and both the Hippotizers were controlled over ArtNet by a grandMA2 light.
📸Holland Zingt Hazes Show 2018, photo credit: Tenfeet
Using Notch to create movable objects and multiple RGB lights in every scene – matched in real-time with the show lights in the arena – also controlled over ArtNet, Tenfeet put the Hippos in charge of outputting to the Barco S3-4K image processor, from where the signal travelled to the venue’s 32.5 x 13m hi-res LED main screen. A Hippotizer Amba acted as ZooKeeper, and as backup, receiving rendered clips from very scene via Notch. When it came to playback, Tenfeet relied solely on Hippotizer V4+ and Notch.
📸 Holland Zingt Hazes Show 2018, photo credit: Tenfeet
Using Notch and Hippotizer V4+ gave the team the advantage of being able to make changes on the fly without having to render new content. Amends were even made during rehearsals and after the first show, meaning that the visual results organically grew in line with the (literally) real-time learning of the team.
For anyone working on Holland Zingt Hazes, expectations are sky-high. Each year, the crowd hears the same 40 hit Hazes songs – this is set in stone – but what does change is the combinations of singers and the promise of ‘never seen before technical additions’ – no mean feat for even the most capable of creatives. The 2018 result, though, was indeed spectacular and was also a technical ‘first’.
The way the scenes were built, textured & lit made it a stunning look with a great 3D feel. With the Hippotizer V4+ and Notch constantly developing in terms of power and features, we are getting the latest tools to work with.
Pim Elberse, Tenfeet
📸Holland Zingt Hazes Show 2018, photo credit: Tenfeet
For those eager to learn even more about this extraordinary event, NotchCon 2019 provides the ideal opportunity. A two-day event dedicated to all things Notch, held 17-18 January in London, the schedule includes a Centre Stage presentation from Tenfeet’s Pim Elberse, during which he will discuss in detail how Tenfeet used Notch and Hippotizer Media Servers to create a hyper-realistic Amsterdam street, one which changed according to the show’s seasons, holidays and special events. Pim’s talk is scheduled for 12:00pm on 18 January 2019.