This summer, she performed at several festivals including Lowlands, Dreamfields and Untold, a new major music festival in Romania. Now, she’s back on Dutch soil. Michelle van Mil (VJ VeeMee and Board Member of Veejays.com) previously worked events like 3FM Serious Request, Intents festival and Dutch Fashion Week. What’s it like to perform at a major festival like Untold?
What exactly is Untold festival?
“Untold festival is the biggest music festival in Europe
and winner of the ‘Best Major Festival of Europe’ award. This year, its second edition was once again held in Romania. Untold is a four-day festival with 8 stages, over 150 performing artists, and over 300,000 visitors overall. My team and I were responsible for the main stage visuals: singer songwriters by day and famous EDM performers by night, like Martin Garrix, Armin van Buuren and Tiësto.”
What was your role in all that?
“I was the main stage video operator. That means it was my job that all screens showed the right visuals, as well as make sure all guest operators were able to do their job without any 
issues. We also created thirty-two intros and the opening and closing shows.”
What does that involve?
“Well, first, you have to find out the stage design and get to know your pixelmap. This is what we use to create our own shows and intros, as well as edit videos sent to us by other crews. Then we go through the line up, so we know which artist performs when. The last thing you want is to have Hardwell’s name pop up when Tiësto’s performing! We also get a lot of material from guest operators, like promotional clips or music videos. It’s my job to make sure those images are converted to the right” 
video codec and resolution. If we don’t do that, we’re in big trouble. Nobody wants to see the screen go black during Nervo’s performance. We also make sure all visuals are neatly catalogued, so we can immediately find the visual we need.” Smiling: “Whenever there’s a song about love, I want those heart visuals at my fingertips.”
How do you cope with stress?
“During the festival, we work anywhere from 12 to 20 hours a day. Whenever I’m VJing myself, I’m in direct contact with the light operator at all times, so we can deliver the perfect overall experience together. And I’m always on stand-by to help out right away if a guest operator gets
into trouble. There’s always something that goes wrong, and Untold is no exception. For example,
upon arrival at the festival, the client changed their mind about the font they wanted. That meant we had to re-render everything
, which caneasily take an entire day. And while that was far from the only obstacle we faced, nothing beats the feeling of getting all that trouble thrown your way, being able to fix it all in time anyway, and seeing the audience go crazy as a result.”
Video edit: Ivo Mulder and Quincy Vogelsangs
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Shakespeare once said, “All the world is a stage.” We couldn’t agree more! Recently, our friends at Vision Impossible created a full-length projection show that incorporated not just the stage, but also involved the audience members’ smartphones and even their dinner tables. VJ Berry van Dijk told us all about what it took to make that happen.
This was a project we did for an international footwear retailer. Once a year, they have a staff week that includes an award dinner for their entire team. It’s a real feel good event, with lots of winners in different categories: best salesperson, best team, et cetera. Every year, the CEO challenges us to come up with a spectacular show. This year, they had decided to host both the dinner and the award show in the same space. That’s how producer Erik Arens 
Met René te Riele and I created a truly over-the-top opening act that had people oohing and aahing. And of course, everyone there was hoping to receive an award. We used projections to turn the dinner tables into “Wheel of Fortune”-like quiz stages, and people could use a custom-made app on their phones to answer multiple choice questions. Meanwhile, the management was up on stage in front of a full-on prize display projection, whipping the room into a frenzy. We’d also used their image in the table animations, turning the entire room into a very lively augmented reality space. Top it off with some branding and good food, and the whole room came together as one.
The technique we used is called “projection mapping”. It means creating an optical illusion through meticulously calculating the shape and size of the table and other objects involved. In order to do that, we had 40 projectors suspended from ceiling trusses (metal frameworks used in stage design). And that wasn’t even including the projectors we needed for the stage! We’d never used that many projectors at the same time before. The projectors were connected to several media servers; basically, heavy-duty computers. Each table was color-coded so we could tell them apart, control them separately, and ensure proper timing. And then, of course, every table was itself split up into 12 different segments. All in all, we couldn’t exactly sit back and relax… Projects like these hinge on technology, and getting it just right is a tall order. But I love it when the audience has absolutely no idea of what’s going on behind the scenes, and people can just drink in the magic of the moment.
This production involved the following parties:
