Event Concept:

Historalia vzw is an organisation that makes spectacle musicals in and outside unique settings. Because of the entire Covid-pandemic, the producer and director came up with the idea of creating ‘Christmas magic (kerstmagie in dutch) without the need of having actors on the scene. The story of Kerstmagie is told by talking elements in all the different rooms. Visitors enter the room with each of their ‘social bubble’ to experience the magic. Kerstmagie takes place in and out of different castles in Belgium.

“From the moment the idea was finalised by the director, we started thinking about how to make it work in a creative way” says Christof Peirsman of Twin4U Events & Projects. “Multiple ideas came up, but every time we bounced against technical difficulties, mainly because there won’t be an AV technician on the spot on all these locations. So we had to find a solution on how everything can start automatically when people enter the room, without the need of having a technician on the spot. Also, when there’s a power outage in the castle, everything needs to reboot automatically and it needs to shut off automatically at the end of the night.”

“Because of all these specifications, we had to find a solution that can tick all these boxes. After a lot of documenting ourselves, we ended up with the Waves System ID-AL EVP380 Event Players. The ID-AL Event Players had the solutions for a stable and reliable system to control lights, sound, and video for this project.”

Before a bubble enters the room, a lamp at the door colors red or green. As long as it’s red, the bubble can’t enter the room. The lamp turns green once the previous bubble is out of the room and the new bubble can safely enter the room.

In the center of every room, there’s a switch -like some sort of carpet- that can be turned on by standing on it. When somebody stands on it, the magical scene begins to play automatically. This eliminates the usage of a push button that needs to be sanitized after every use. From the moment the short scene in the room begins, the footswitch is turned off to make sure the magical performance won’t re-activate with the same bubble again.

The visitors inside the room can enjoy a magical performance of 3 – 4 minutes before entering the next room. There are 9 rooms in the castle where the story of Christmas magic is told. Each room reveals answers to a question the kids get at the beginning of the event.

Why have you chosen the ID-Al EVP380 Event Players for this project?

After testing the players in a demo, we were rather quickly convinced that this offers us everything we need for this kind of production. Besides this production, we suddenly saw the potential for more opportunities and projects where these players can be used. For example, the ID-AL EVP380 Event Players can be used for retail purposes, advertising, exposition stands, spotlighting of buildings, digital signage, … and many more.

The Event Players give us some sort of stability, reliability, and a comprehensive solution towards new possibilities. We can now offer interactive solutions with javascript applications, pushbuttons, input sensors, time schedulers, etc.

How many event players have you used?

For the project of Kerstmagie, we needed 54 players to make this project possible in all the castles and locations. Unfortunately, because of the Covid-19-crisis, the project has been postponed to next year. In return, we can get the possibility to do this project in even more castles so we will have to go to more than 90 units of these ID-AL EVP380 Event Players in total. With these, Twin4u will have the biggest capacity of these Players in Belgium that can be used for all sorts of projects.

Which features of the Players are used?

Every room will receive sound, light, and sometimes also video, controlled by the ID-AL Event Players. There are multiple speakers in every room so that every talking role or element in that room has its own speaker. This gives the magic an ‘immersive’ feeling. Every audio track is timecoded with a light performance to always match the ambiance and in such a way that the talking elements are in the spotlight and clearly visible.