Soundstorm Music Festival

Comix provided highly malleable video to help propel Soundstorm into the spotlight as one of the world’s biggest music festivals.

Over the past two years, Comix have produced video content for MDLBEAST’s Big Beast Stage at Soundstorm Festival, hosted over three days in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. For each festival, they’ve aimed to bring Production Designer and MDLBEAST Creative Director Alex Reardon’s massive mainstage to life, creating visuals that organically bring out the very best from the stage’s unique design.

Emil Bardh, Comix’s Lead Notch Designer, chose Notch for its rendering capabilities, which gave the creative team the power to render millions of high-resolution particles at heightened speeds while previewing their particles textured on a real-time 3D model of the on-site setup. In Bardh’s own words, “Notch allows for an authentic experience where what you see is what you get.”

Their greatest challenge was to output a vast amount of content at 10K resolution quickly while updating and adapting their material quickly as pixel maps and show conditions changed, but incorporating Notch into their workflow helped them deliver everything with time and energy to spare. The Independent praised Soundstorm’s immersive escapism and declared the festival “the Middle East’s very own Glastonbury.”

“Using Notch to turn around amended renders the week of the festival was hugely valuable and gave us extra time to download content onto the video servers.”

Harry Bird, CEO & Video Producer, Comix

Additional press coverage:
The Independent, We Rave You, The National News, CULTR.

Credits
Client: MDLBEAST & Soundstorm Festival
Production Company: Production Glue 
Production Design: Alex Reardon & Silent House
Creative Direction: Alex Reardon for MDLBEAST Soundstorm & Josh Gallagher for Comix
Lead Notch Designer: Emil Bardh for Comix

Big Beast Camera/Broadcast Director: Charlie Alves
Video Producers: Visual Noise for MDL & Harry Bird for Comix
Lighting Designer: Alex Reardon 
Screen Producers: Visual Noise
Animators: Comix Team (Josh Gallagher, Sam Hodgkiss, Tom Harrison, & Emil Bardh)