Romania - Elation lighting fixtures took centre stage at the 10th anniversary of the Untold Festival, one of Europe’s largest music festivals, held 7-20 August in Cluj-Napoca in the Transylvania region of Romania. With more than 470,000 attendees and a lineup featuring Post Malone, Armin van Buuren, Martin Garrix, Tiësto, Becky Hill and more, the milestone edition was celebrated with a production that blended folklore-inspired staging with state-of-the-art lighting.
For the first time, Apart Productions, led by Andrei Predut, took charge of Untold’s main stage lighting after several years of working on the festival’s secondary stages. As part of the team, Florina Dascal served as the overall art director, Bobo Nedelcu from Apart Vision was the head VJ and video designer, and Alex Mihut, head of the sound department at Apart Sound, led the audio direction.
Predut and his team, working in partnership with gear provider Bivolu and Elation’s Romanian distributor Zeedo, turned to Elation’s SŌL I Blinders, Proteus Hybrid, and Proteus Hybrid MAX fixtures to bring the ornamented stage to life and create a visually stunning show.
“Zeedo really showcased Elation products. They are always putting in the extra effort to put Elation forward and we were looking for an opportunity to make Elation visible in our market,” stated Predut, who had visited the Elation facility in Kerkrade to get a closer look at the Elation line. “It was an extra step to bring the fixtures here, but they were the necessary fixtures for the job.”
The Untold main stage is a massive, multidisciplinary undertaking, with artistic direction, structural engineering, and technical design all working in unison. For the festival’s 10th anniversary, the stakes were higher than ever, with a strong emphasis placed on the stage’s unique decorative frame - a defining element that set the visual identity of this year’s celebration.
The main stage design, inspired by Romanian fairytales and folklore, featured an elaborate dragon motif that was dramatically brought to life using 130 SŌL I Blinders deployed not as traditional blinders but as eye candy and texture enhancers to accentuate the dragon décor. Arranged in a crisscross design to mimic dragon scales, the SŌL fixtures highlighted the ornate décor using gradients and dynamic colour shifts that brought depth and motion to the scenery.
“We needed the dragon to come alive rather than just lay down a large brush of colour, which would have been a bit boring,” commented Predut, who supervised the main stage lighting team. “That’s why we used lots of smaller sources, so we could create gradients and patterns that followed the contours of the décor. The fact that we could have such a rich spectrum of colours was the main benefit of the SŌLs and the main reason why we went with them.”
Forty-eight Proteus Hybrid fixtures formed a powerful crown of beams that filled the stadium, creating what Predut described as “a dome or coliseum of light” effect while 10 Proteus Hybrid MAX fixtures, mounted in hard-to-access positions beneath the stage, delivered striking gobo textures. “We were a bit nervous because they were mounted in a place where there was no access to them, so reliability was a must,” Predut said. “We did not have any problems though, which was not true for all brands. Reliability on this project was a huge win for Elation.”
While Elation’s presence in the Romanian rental market has been limited, Untold marked an important moment for the brand in the country. With Zeedo’s support, Apart Productions sourced additional units through Motion to meet the scale of the production.
“The market is shifting, and local rental companies are discovering other brands like Elation,” Predut added. “Once people see Elation in action, confidence in the brand grows. For big outdoor festivals, I look at Elation fixtures. Reliability and colour quality are everything and Elation proved itself on both fronts.”