LOCATIONS:   JOHANNESBURG  |  MIAMI  |  BUENOS AIRES  |  DEN BOSCH  |  SYDNEY,
DATE: March 19th – April 16th 2011
LISTENERS: 20 Million
LINE UP: Jorn v Deynhoven  |  Armin v Buuren  |  Dash Berlin  |  Mark Schultz  |  W&W  |  Cosmic Gate

CLIENT:

 

G-Productions is responsible for all the annual live shows on location for Armin van Buuren since 2006, producing shows in over 20 countries worldwide.

 

THE CHALLENGE

A State of Trance a weekly radio show hosted by prominent trance DJ and producer Armin van Buuren. It first aired in March 2001 and has over 20 million listeners weekly. Every 50th show is an on-location live show. The 500th edition was a single radioshow, recorded on 5 continents in a timespan of 5 weeks. The pre party of this grand endeavor took place in Kaapstad, two days before the official start of the ASOT 500 tour in Johannesburg on March 19th.

The ASOT team is 6 man strong, with G-Productions occupying 3 of those spots. Gijs Alkemade and Ralph Hooghoud for onsite production, Dion Postdijk for audio editing from our studio in The Hague and Raymon Garnier and Ruben de Ronden from Crossmediaventures for online connectivity. is the concept developer and promoter for A state of trance, their tour managers Danielle Stokman and Dennis de Bruin were our towers of strength throughout this amazing ordeal.

 

THE PRODUCTION

G-Productions had two mobile studios in rotation during this 5 week marathon. Logistic wise this made sense as the risk of not getting gear on location in time was just to big with only one studio. Our trip to Beirut earlier that year was fresh in our memories still.
When arriving on location the first order of business is meeting up with the people that you’ve talked to in preparation of the show. These meetings mostly consist of getting to know each other and making sure that all the necessary preparations were carried out. In Kaapstad it was a breeze, in Buenos Aires we were already 3 weeks in and these meetings became a test of fighting fatigue. When finally in Sydney (continent number 5), there was no fighting left. Gijs was discussing a rather complicated plan for routing audio, only to fall asleep mid-sentence while a dozen or so onlookers were taking copious notes.

After this initial meeting it usually takes two 18-hour workdays to set up audio in the venue and getting everything hooked up, synchronized and working as advertised. In all of the cities we were setting up shop the people were exited to have ASOT taking place in their venue which made the work quite a bit easier. During the events themself we had various reporters on site to give us a live report of the mayhem that was taking place on the dancefloor. It made for some of the better bits of these 6 hour shows, so a huge thank you to all of the fans for contributing!

After the final show in Sydney the Asot 500 crew was so tired that even an all paid for surfing holiday on Bondi Beach could not persuade them to stay for a minute longer. Time to rest up for: A State of Trance # 550!

 
G-Productions is looking ahead and is moonsuiting-up for A State of Trance #1000. A broadcast live from the MOON (if we can believe Armin..)

 

CHARTS AND FIGURES

 

This is a reasonable question, but it is easier to ask than to answer