Tomorrowland releases documentary about their 2020 virtual festival

Tomorrowland has pioneered innovation after innovation from fantasy-land stages, immersive festival experiences, a personal currency, and magnificent art installations. Hence, there’s no surprise that they refused to let 2020 ruin their plans. This year, we won’t be able to buy food with ‘Pearls,’ but instead, we’ve been granted behind the scenes access to the creation of Tomorrowland’s first-ever complete digital festival world, which is the creators have named the ‘magical island of Pāpiliōnem.’

‘Never stop the music – The Creation of Tomorrowland 2020’ is a 17-minute exclusive documentary film released on October 27th. It features a detailed look into the development process that went into the 2-day digital festival experience. There is some incredible footage of the science behind the whole event, which includes 8 virtual stages located on a 3-D island that has become a new and unique festival location that allowed more than 1 million People of Tomorrow to interact with each other and celebrate music together. With the help of cutting edge technology, fiercely talented visual effects artists, 3D designers, and video producers, our favorite names in the industry were able to deliver a truly fantastic experience, despite experiencing unprecedented challenges. 25 of the most prominent and respected artists worldwide had both the pleasure and the privilege to perform on Pāpiliōnem. Among them, Charlotte de Witte, who shared her initial thoughts on the ‘digital festival’ idea:

“When Tomorrowland called me with the idea of this digital festival, I thought this could be really something – a way of bringing people together. If it cannot be in real life, let’s try to make the best of it in a very unique and virtual way. It’s extremely cool what they have done.”

Alongside Charlotte are Afrojack, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Martin Garrix, Tiësto, David Guetta, Amelie Lens, Paul Kalkbrenner, to name a few of the many featured artists, sharing their thoughts on the whole situation and their experience performing at this very unusual yet incredibly beautiful festival. Martin Garrix shares:

“Tomorrowland reached out to me and said they had this crazy idea to build the entire festival in virtual reality – like in a 3D world. At first, I was a bit like “let’s see”, but then they started sending me renders of how it was going to look. It was very futuristic and forward-thinking. I think Tomorrowland has always been doing that – it has always been thinking of how it can be one step ahead of any other festival.”

So yes, if you’re wondering if Tomorrowland managed to create a digital wonderland including a whole 3D fantasy island, 8 stages that look so realistic that you just might forget that it’s all digital, and to top it off, gathered the best of the best to perform there – yes, they did that. Thanks to this short film, we get a glimpse into the production process and how these incredible artists succeeded in delivering unbelievable performances in front of a hard-working film crew and a green screen. And believe me, there’s a lot of green screens. Check out the documentary down below:

Image Credit: Tomorrowland