From Hï Ibiza to David Guetta: Designing DJ sets with High Scream

Clubs have always been an atmospheric place to party. These days, however, clubbers expect something more than big speakers and flashing lights. They want a complete show, with huge screens, complex visuals, and memorable moments that can be shared on social media. 

Few have witnessed this shift as closely as Pol Fernandez Losada, Content Director at the studio division of global production and events company, High Scream. After completing his studies in cinema and show design, Losada started working on DJ visuals across Barcelona’s club scene. His work saw all the local clubs upgrade their video capabilities, and took him to Hï Ibiza  where he worked as a VJ during the legendary club's opening year. Impressed by his performances, High Scream brought Pol on board.

The art of DJ visuals

Over his eight years at High Scream Studio, Pol has risen to lead the creative team behind the company's visual productions. Together, they create every visual element of live shows, from concept to onsite programming, for artists like David Guetta, Fisher and more.  

Creating graphics for the spontaneous world of electronic music, however, has always been a specialty. While the studio works on all manner of projects, their multi-disciplinary approach to visual experiences — creating everything from VFX and 2D animations to real-time graphics — makes High Scream Studio the ideal partner for any DJs who want to create mind-bending experiences for their audiences.

“Whether it's Coldplay’s epic World of the Spheres tour, or the Las Vegas Sphere, audiences have grown used to a visual spectacle alongside live music,” says Pol. “But creating visuals for DJs is a different art form. DJing is, by its nature, looser and more reactive than other concerts. So we need to use cutting-edge techniques and real-time tools that enable DJs to make last-minute track selections, while still showing visuals that are perfectly synced to the music.”

Pushing boundaries with superstar DJs

Pol utilised many of these techniques and tools on various recent projects for world-famous artists, including DJ Snake and David Guetta. Both artists wanted to alter their surroundings and push the boundaries of what’s possible for an electronic music production.

When DJ Snake played Stade de France, 90,000 fans came to dance the night away. High Scream Studios was brought on board to create an immersive visual show. The complicated staging consisted of a huge LED curved canvas spanning ten 4K outputs, allowing the audience to become immersed in the high-quality visuals.

“We used six Disguise GX 3 servers to power the Notch real-time effects on-screen. An infrared camera mounted behind the booth captured real-time body tracking of DJ Snake, creating different treatments to represent the artist form at a giant scale,” Pol explains. “Disguise's Designer software also helped us create the show visuals. The software's perspective projection feature was handy, as it enabled these live camera elements - which involved extensive forced perspective - to transition seamlessly from render to server without any distortion.”

David Guetta’s Galactic Circus residency at Ibiza’s [UNVRS] was another memorable project. Thematically, the performances were envisioned as a ‘gateway to the unknown’ for the island’s intrepid partiers. Visual elements needed to help create an alternative utopia, with an intergalactic, circus-like atmosphere. This meant 60 LED screens of various sizes on the walls and suspended from the ceiling, complex lighting, circus performers, and props.

Not wanting to deliver an identical show night after night, Guetta would switch around the setlist and insert different tracks. The immersive visuals, which ranged from an alien galaxy to mind-bending particle effects, needed to be flexible enough to facilitate these nightly changes. The High Scream team once again turned to the GX 3 servers to do the heavy-lifting of generating Notch graphics in real-time. 

“Designer was used to enable us to previz everything in 3D, even when I wasn’t on set,” Pol explains. “That meant I could preview the same viewing angles as the audience. On top of that, Designer also allowed us to build a huge library of 230 pre-programmed visuals and variations on tracks from various David Guetta performances we’d worked on throughout the years, which meant we had something ready to go no matter what Guetta chose to do on the night.”

The future of dancefloors

For Pol, Guetta’s performance exemplifies where DJ visuals are heading in the future. “Guetta’s performance was an experience that went beyond that of a traditional nightclub to deliver something more immersive and experiential,” he adds. “In the future, I believe we’ll begin to see more DJs make that transition. The club scene is looking at innovations like the Las Vegas Sphere and envisioning much bigger things for their own venues, using the same technology. The trend towards more mind-blowing dancefloors will continue, while still retaining the improvisational feel that audiences want.”

When it comes to creating these bigger, better nightclub experiences, Pol is looking to Unreal Engine. After building more complex scenes in the engine, he plans to explore using Disguise RenderStream to display them on huge LED walls and screens during performances, enabling him to deliver real-time content on a massive scale.

Right now though, Pol is celebrating the wrap of his latest project - an epic closing party for [UNVRS], which saw out the season with a 12-hour electronic music extravaganza. Utilising the venue’s giant LED screen, High Scream Studios’ visuals took the audience on a journey through space, with a unique planet for each DJ, before the club’s physical windows opened to flood the dancefloor with natural light at sunrise.

It’s a perfect example of a venue using LED screens to create an unforgettable experience, without the limitations of traditional set design. By combining the virtual with real-world surroundings, the venue can realise things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, ensuring there’s more for audiences to enjoy than the music.

“Ultimately, video is another way for artists to tell their story, and they can now expect to communicate their unrestrained vision,” says Pol. “We’ve come a long way from when I started at Ushuaïa Ibiza. Today, DJs know that LED screens can enable everything from otherworldly vistas to set extensions that make the dancefloor feel endless. With this in mind, clubs all over the world are looking to up their video content, and I, for one, can’t wait to see it come to life.”

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