Behind the scenes: Filming ‘Into The Wild’ @ Mysteryland!

Mysteryland, otherwise known as ‘Skitzyland’ has been deemed a vital highlight of Alive At Night’s event agenda. After attending last years’ edition for the very first time, I was blown away to say the least; no stone was left unturned as everything from the design, line-up and overall vibe was spot on. Boasting an entire weekend filled with madness and bizzarity, Mysteryland really is the go-to for party-goers seeking out a life-altering, refreshing experience.

As the end of August was approaching, my exhilaration shifted into overdrive as I realised that Mysteryland was right on the horizon. Grasping the opportunity to attend this years’ edition with open arms, I knew that a review alone wasn’t going to cut it, so I planned to bring my camera guy(s) Dennis and Sara along to capture the ‘skitz vibes’ in pure AAN spirit.

As part of our new concept ‘Into The Wild,’ our aim is to reveal Hard Dance culture in its purest, most uncensored form – I’m indeed talking about the good, bad and ugly of festivals. After filming our first segment at Dance Valley (which will be online this week) and capturing some incredible footage, we were eager to see what madness Mysteryland would bring!

For our readers who think that filming is all fun and games and merely allows you to enter a festival for free, you couldn’t be more wrong; it’s no walk in the park, especially on a scorching hot day. So, for those who want to read about our exclusive behind the scenes experience at Mysteryland, gear up for a report like no other!

Time: 10:40AM

Location: Cassi’s residence – Zaandam.

The situation: I awaken from a pleasant slumber and to my dismay I turn on my phone only to have ten missed calls from Sara, who was on her way to my house. Whenever I schedule plans with Sara (including filming or anything important) I have to factor in an extra hour of lateness, due to her general glacial pace of life. However for once Sara was actually on time, which was impressive, however she did take her fucking time to perfect her make-up. Our main camera guy Dennis (aka Demmedia) arrives at my place somewhere around 11:30 and as I rapidly slap on my make-up we deliberate about our plans for the day and make a rough schedule of what we will film.

After downing enough coffee to invigorate a small town and making something to eat, just after midday we set out on our merry way with a pit-stop at a bakery to buy a loaf of bread (yes, a loaf of bread). Arriving at the festival after 1:00, we were running slightly behind schedule due to the ridiculously long walk from the car-park and once we tried to find the press area we realised that there were no lockers there, meaning that we had to walk all the way back to the entrance and purchase lockers for our equipment. This unnecessary walking pushed our schedule back further, meaning that we had to rush our set-up and make our way to the Q-dance stage to quickly film the introduction. Mind you, we only had the daytime hours to film as we didn’t have proper lighting to film during the evening, leaving us around five hours to get all of the shots we needed.

3:30PM: After sculling a glass of wine at lightning speed to calm my nerves, it only seemed logical to capture an incredible intro whilst standing on the hill, giving us an amazing image of the colossal Q-dance stage. By the way, massive props to Q-dance for using my zodiac sign (Ram) as the stage, it made me very proud to be a majestic Aries and I felt right in my element during the entire weekend!

My vision was to film the introduction with a group of crazy ravers and straight away we came across a group of lovely girls who were dressed up in wild outfits. We included them in the introduction, took two quick takes before moving on to ask visitors “who is your artist crush?” This segment will be separate to our other festival videos and a fun little film to publish whilst I’m back in Australia.

After getting a few responses we made our way back to the artist lounge to see who we could do a cheeky interview with. Sitting at a table and enjoying a meal were Audiotricz, who seemed happy to participate in a rather hilarious interview. Cracking jokes about taking some nude photos in the photobooth, Leon and I were filmed walking into the photobooth, however there was no nudity involved (that happened later on in the weekend). We thanked the guys for the interview, grabbed a drink from the bar and got ready to film our favourite segment – yep, I’m indeed talking about #cookedcam. The ‘cooked cam’ is a pretty self-explanatory segment; it highlights the funnier side of festival culture and some of the people we interview during this provide the most mind-blowing responses. You’ll know what we’re talking about once our first video is published. During filming the cooked cam, I asked a guy if his drugs were nice and he replied “thank you very much,” before asking me out on a date.

Me, Dennis and Sara felt a surge of excitement after filming this and we then made our way to the mainstage where we would film ravers in their natural habitat. We were on a quest to find the most cooked people in the area and to our delight we found a couple who were in their late 30’s and were evidently having the time of their lives. We subtly filmed them as I continued with running commentary – no one is safe from the ‘Into The Wild’ team! We then took a different angle on our observations and found a group of typical ‘basic bitches’ wearing flower crowns and decided to follow them for about five minutes. They had absolutely no idea.

We then found the most ‘cooked’ part of the festival ground, which were the beautifully-designed techno stages with plenty of decorations. Roaming the area and finding absurd people to interview, we were almost ready to head back to the Q-dance stage and hand out slices of bread to ravers, however we came across two hilarious guys who wanted a slice of bread and an interview.

Rushing back to the Q-dance stage, we were on a tight schedule and were curious to see how visitors would react to being handed a slice of bread. Carbohydrates are a very important source of fuel, so I decided to bring a loaf of bread along with me (I still don’t know how security let that one slide, but okay). We were incredibly surprised to see how many people were taking the bread and shovelling it into their mouths, but of course a lot of people looked at us with a dumbfounded expression, thinking “food is the last thing on my agenda.” I couldn’t control the laughter, people were really digging into this bread and doing some weird shit with it – I regretted not buying two loaves. With the last couple of slices we made our way up to the VIP deck and “made it rain on dem hoes,” otherwise rapidly throwing bread off the VIP deck (sorry environment).

Buzzing with delight and satisfaction with our bread adventures, we walked to the top of the pyramid to check out the Virtual Reality area, which was pretty much a congregation of cooked people taking a break. I also interviewed an American guy outside of the area who was so eager to be included in the film that he kissed me (gg to that guy, what a champion). After spending a few minutes in there, we walked back down the hundreds of stairs and made our way back into the crowd to get our outro, which was filmed during Frequencerz set whilst I was sitting on a guy’s shoulders.

We were delighted to have captured such incredible, raw footage, so we gave ourselves a well-deserved pat on the back, grabbed a drink and spend an hour partying in the crowd before leaving one hour early to beat the traffic. Upon arriving back at my house, I cooked a delicious dinner for the crew and whilst eating we watched some of the footage we captured and laughed our asses off!

It was a busy and stressful day, but turned out to be extremely rewarding and loads of fun! Thanks to Mysteryland for having us over the weekend, we enjoyed every minute of this incredible festival. The first episode of ‘Into The Wild’ will be coming this afternoon, and the Mysteryland episode will be on its way very soon too, so stay tuned!