Hippotizer Drives Sherwood Court's Unified Canvas

Deep in the Double JJ Resort, more than 40,000 attendees spent four days immersed in Sherwood Court’s hallmark visuals.

A panoramic canvas over 7,000 pixels wide blended lighting, lasers and video into one environment, all run by Hippotizer media servers from Green Hippo, an ACT Entertainment brand.

Content and creative studio Observatory has shaped Sherwood Court’s look for the past five years — over a third of Electric Forest's fourteen-year history — on behalf of Leisure Expert Group and Insomniac Events. Their mission: let every visiting act present a distinct show without losing the stage’s recognisable identity.

"Artist VJs are often slightly concerned about another operator becoming part of their show," said Simon Harris, Technical Director at Observatory. "But they quickly see that I’m there to enhance the audience experience while keeping the stage aesthetic on brand. The biggest challenge is always trying to complement the incoming artist production while retaining the festival and Sherwood Court aesthetic. Having a wealth of creative FX at my fingertips allows me to quickly match colors and manipulate the content to complement the artist’s production."

That philosophy is paying dividends. "Incoming artists and their teams seemed to be much more accepting of the scenic content being part of their show," Harris explained. "It really became an extension of the overall performance rather than something sitting alongside it."

For 2026, the stage featured a 5mm LED proscenium header, two IMAG screens and an upstage 7mm LED wall, forming a 7056 x 2864-pixel canvas. Screenworks supplied the Hippotizer media servers as part of wider video packages across Sherwood Court, Ranch Arena and Tripolee, powering Observatory's scenic layer and, when needed, routing artist content to the upstage wall for acts without their own video operator.

Observatory authored the scenic material as a single unified canvas, then used Hippotizer's Output Manager and VideoMapper to align visuals to the architecture. Live control combined a Stream Deck XL, two MIDI controllers and a custom TouchOSC interface on iPad, all coordinated via Hippotizer's MultiController.

"We control the show from multiple devices," said Harris. "Hippotizer gives us the flexibility to trigger scenic looks, adjust colour correction, apply visual effects and make live creative changes from whichever controller is most appropriate."

Consistency from year to year is built in. "I'm able to import last year's show file, add any additional content and carry on where I left off," Harris explained. "Even importing our content backup of around 160GB takes only a matter of minutes."

Across the four-day run, the Hippotizer systems drove the large-format scenic canvas alongside artist content without needing technical support, allowing Observatory’s team to stay focused on audience impact. The production crew included Stage Manager Jason Merder, Video Project Manager and Crew Chief Jeff Smith, and Video Engineers Bilal Mahmood and Nate Brister.

Credit: © Alive Coverage for Electric Forest

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