We first spotted a great home demo on Vimeo that he did after using GrandVJ since just one day, then the week after he was already taking GrandVJ live on stage for the ZôL concert at Metamorphoses, a French Electronic music festival.

Well last week we were at the MixMove Expo for DJ & Club Culture in Paris and we met Charlie Mars there, he was participating to the first France VJ & Videodesigner Championship with our GrandVJ software.

Charlie had to compete with eight other French VJ’s and he won the championship thanks to his talent, his very creative content and.. with the help of GrandVJ.

Read below for his impressions and a few pictures (kindly provided by LeCollagiste – Merci Laurent!).

It wasn’t easy for me to approach a “VJing Championship” because “Championship” relates to sport and sport is not really my thing, because competition means that there is a winner and I don’t really like when there are losers, even if I’m the one who wins, and even though being the winner is kinda cool: it’s a plus for the Ego and motivates for continuing, but ok I digress..

We (the participating Vj’s) were primarily here to defend a discipline that still lacks recognition (some event organizers still think that VJ’s play for free..) and highlight the most creative aspects of VJing, this championship was a great opportunity to do so.

It is always difficult, from my point of view, to judge a creative work on precise criteria, the verdict is necessarily subjective and I think that each participant had its own, well affirmed style. Yes, I saw some very good stuff, the level was high.

Personally, I give more importance to content than technique, that’s why I use GrandVJ; it’s simple, totally stable (very important, especially when like me you have 68 loops per deck on 20+ decks..), with a fast and fun learning curve, but still without forgetting the technical tools necessary to the quality of the projection (frame blending, keystoning, time sync, etc..)

My setup wasn’t anything very complex, an Alienware laptop (Core I7, 4Gb Ram), two MIDI controllers: a Novation Launchpad and a Korg Nanokontrol, my multicolour hood and of course GrandVJ. That’s all I need to have a lot of fun, mix on instinct and cut like a lumberjack.. And that is very good!

As you can see it’s all very organized; thanks to the laptop stands he only needs a small table to fit everything and be ready to mix both music and visuals in sync.

Allowing this kind of very mobile setup is exactly what we want to achieve by making GrandVJ a lightweight but powerful video mixing software that can very easily produce great visuals even on a laptop. Actually, it’s so easy that DJ Ron – which was primarily a DJ as you guessed – had no problems to add VJing to his skills without sacrificing his DJ talent..

So if you want to be a professional VJ/DJ, you must have some talent and sense of rhythm, that’s a fact.. Clever organization of your setup is also must, as we’ve just seen. But I know from discussing with DJ Ron on Facebook that all his files are also very carefully organized. When mixing live you certainly don’t want to be looking after that video loop that was on that drive you left home, right?

Have a look at the last picture below, DJ Ron comments:

“For radio mixshows, I use a 320 GB music drive which contains about 15,000 MP3s. For DJ/VJ gigs, I use a 1.5 TB video drive that contains about 7500 music videos.”

“The most important thing to me is keeping a complete backup. I travel with two drives that are mirrored, in case one goes down, I can switch to the other. At home, I have a third mirrored drive in case my bag is stolen or damaged. Take it from me – BACKUP your content. Don’t learn the hard way.”

“I have my own folder system that I use to track music. I am still in the process of converting my CD library to digital – in addition to maintaining the constant influx of new music. I don’t think my system would work for others, but it works for me.”

That’s right, the best way for you to organize your files is probably your way.. But we all can use a little inspiration, so are you using folders or file names? Are you sorting video loops by duration, style, color or length? Feel free to comment and let everyone know your clever way of organizing music tracks and video loops on your drives!

Charlie is the guy with the funny colorful hood, of course we spotted the GrandVJ software interface on his laptop, with the Korg Nano’s..

So we sent him a little message to know more about him; read the full post for his explanations below the video.

Charlie explains:

The visual mix on the Samsung LCD screen on the desk was made with GrandVJ, of course I re-embedded the mix on the screen when rendering the final video to get a better image quality than what you get when filming a screen.

It only took me two takes of live mix on the 2 minutes music track from Zôl to get the result you see on the screen and actually I bought GrandVJ just the day before! Now I really intend to continue to use it..

In the past I have used ArKaos VJ MIDI then tried some other VJing software but I’ve never been really satisfied.. But when I tested GrandVJ that was all I was looking for. It’s fun, efficient, easy to use, adaptable, perfect when you need to be reactive and play instinctively.. And most importantly, it’s stable; no sudden crash!

My usual setup is very basic, I like to play quick with raw content, I prefer spending more time to prepare my loops, to film them and invent them than to configure software and controllers..

I’m using NanoPAD and NanoKEY controllers from Korg, with 24 loops per bank. I use the NanoKEY for opacity and as for the effects I’m mainly using Zoom Bass at the moment because I found it great to give the tempo a kick when it’s getting down after a speedy one hour mix!

I’ll definitely take some more time to dig GrandVJ and its functionalities but as it is I’m really glad I found such a great tool.

If you like it, keep an eye on Charlie Mars’ creations for more stuff like this, now that he’s getting used to GrandVJ :)

He can be found on his own web site but also on Vimeo, YouTube, DailyMotion and MySpace.

Back in March we featured a show report on the ArKaos web site about the installation made by lighting designer Sebastien Jurkowski at the Zouk Club in Kuala Lumpur.

This impressive setup in a not less impressive venue was the very first time our brand new media server software ArKaos MediaMaster was used in a Club installation and it proved to be a very good and reliable solution since it is now the subject of a 3 pages article and interview in mondo*dr magazine, the international publication for technology in entertainment.

Here is a short video clip from the installation in the main room at Zouk Club, read further below for some interesting parts of the article.

If you’re into clubbing installations be sure to read the full article with all technical details and illustrated with pictures. It is available in the digital version of the July/August edition of mondo*dr at page 54.

The article explains how the club has been refurbished from four rooms to 6 rooms with different music content to suit local clubbing conditions and gather a more sophisticated crowd. Whilst much of the audio system is a reconfiguration of the pre-existing, Sebastien has put a huge effort on the lighting part by bringing together video and lighting technologies to create an impressively immersive whole.

The main Zouk room features a serie of LED screens combining to form a 20 x 1.5m video wall, while the upstairs VIP room (overlooking the mainroom) has its own set of LED walls and Plasma screens . They all display visual content sent from a single ArKaos MediaMaster controlled by a Chamsys MagicQ desk which also controls Kinetic lighting from a Martin Pro rig.

“I first used ArKaos VJ DMX in the Mix Club“ explains Jurkowski. “It was controlled by the MagicQ from Chamsys. Having used it for two years, I realized how powerful these two tools were when working together”. Sebastien was so impressed that he actually joined the ArKaos team for a year, working with us to develop MediaMaster, our next generation media server software.

“Because of my nightclub background I wanted something funky, powerful, easy to use, and with lots of Audio generated visuals, audio triggered, text and bass reactive effects. They created MediaMaster which is controllable by DMX and also the GrandVJ software which is geared more for the Pure VJ acts,” he continues.

“The result of having this groundbreaking software in a club like Zouk which is equipped with LED walls, plasma TVs, and a whole array of lighting effects is quite astonishing. When the DJ plays the music (anything from trance to techno to house and even hip hop), it quite literally makes the visuals on the LEDs and plasmas plus the lighting effects bounce to the beat” (…)

In yet another room, Barsonic, an intimate space for Electro-Indie music has been created: A DJ booth, slashed with light (provided by an embedded LED rope) pulses colour in time to Elation Octostrip LEDs positioned around the room. A Martin Pro LightJockey controls PR Lighting and Martin Pro fixtures whilst MIDI real time video mixing is made possible by Arkaos’ GrandVJ.

With the Stylish VIP venue Aristo, a plush party pad Velvet, and the airy Terrace Bar to complete the line-up, Zouk has once again secured its place at the top of the KL club scene.

As a part of their creation process they make a very advanced use of ArKaos software’s blend and mask modes to map visuals on onto architecture or objects.

They have once again caught our attention with one of their latest installations, a stunning visual show in Breda’s cathedral. It’s a beautiful mix of painting projection, light sculpture, perfect mapping and great music made by a team of very experienced professionals..

But enough words, have a look at the video; it’s really worth watching to the end!

Credits goes to Yannick Jacquet (Legoman), Joanie Lemercier (crustea), Romain Tardy (Aalto) and Olivier Ratsi (Emovie) from ANTIVJ. Original music is by Thomas Vaquié, played on organ by Gerard Maters and the lighting design is by Giacinto Caponio.

Finally, we couldn’t resist adding another video to this post; the TV report from Dutch television where you can see the ANTIVJ team interviewed while setting up the show and explaining their background and how they evolved to this concept (the presentation is in Dutch but the interviews are in English). It also briefly shows some of ANTIVJ’s other very interesting realizations.

For more, be sure to check out Crustea’s YouTube Channel, ANTIVJ on Vimeo and the ANTIVJ Blog.

It features  Interviews and Footage from The Light Surgeons, D-Fuse, Hexstatic, Vj Anyone, Addictive TV, Vector Meldrew and Fatamorgana.

About V.I.A.

With over six years experience in the live events industry, the V.I.A – (Visually Impaired Artists) cultivate a range of digital disciplines for the mutual love of live performance.

With professional backgrounds in the Broadcasting, Film and Live events industries their live performances bring together a mix of Animation, Motion Graphics, 8mm, Film & Video, Video feedback, live camera work and Lighting Design.