Disguise's product manager for Live Events and Location-Based Experiences Ollie Newland joins screens producer Joshua Koffman of Interrobang, Inc. to discuss their work on Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour as part of XLIVE: The Concert Touring Sessions at LDI 2025 on Saturday, December 6.
Use promo code XLIVE20 to save 20% on XLIVE: The Concert Touring Sessions.
Live Design chats with Newland about his work at Disguise, the Coldplay panel at LDI, and his advice for the next generation.
Live Design: How did you get started in this industry?
Ollie Newland: As part of my degree at university, I did a year-long placement scheme at Panasonic where I worked in their professional camera team. After graduation I was fortunate enough to be offered a permanent position in product marketing. I then spent the next seven years working on products including their Varicam digital cinema camera before transitioning to live systems including PTZs, system cameras, and then working on Kairos.
During this time I was involved in a couple of projects with Disguise (then D3), which included projection mapping onto a Tesla at the Panasonic stand at ISE in 2015, and then doing a live series in a volume powered by Disguise that leveraged set extension and RenderStream.
I then joined the product team at Disguise four years ago, with a verticalized focus on live events and location-based experiences. If I drew a Venn diagram that consisted of my interests then, frankly speaking, this job would fall in the centre of that. Being able to work with a product on the bleeding edge that leads to groundbreaking new ways of enhancing the audience experience is what keeps me inspired and motivated.
LD: How do you work with and support artists in their projects?
ON: At Disguise, we’re lucky enough to help creators and technologists bring their impossible ideas to life with tools that hopefully help to improve their lives. Programmers and video designers liaise with content teams and, in most cases, directly with the band or artist in order to bring their creative vision to life. I have always found it to be quite interesting that shows that have a closely integrated team tend to have projects that are not only visually stunning, but a memorable calling card of the artist’s message at that point in time too. It goes to show that a cohesive working relationship between artists, management, video and content teams really can make a world of difference.
LD: What is the most challenging project you have encountered at Disguise?
ON: Eurovision is the world’s biggest music competition, with an average audience of over 160 million people. The final consists of 37 entrants. Each entrant has written an original song and put together their own creative direction. As a result, the level of complexity in producing a show of this magnitude is immense.
Disguise has played a major role in powering the Eurovision Song Contest on seven occasions. We were appointed as an Official Technical Events Supplier for both Malmo 2024, and again for Basel 2025.
For Eurovision 2024 we worked on providing a full SMPTE ST 2110 workflow from the media server to the LED screen, which made it the first large-scale live broadcast event to achieve this feat. Working on this project was an incredible experience, and made me appreciate how fortunate I am to work with some of the brightest and most capable minds in media and entertainment. We then went on to repeat this for Eurovision 2025.
IP-based video technologies is something that I am passionate about, as it enables us to push higher resolutions at higher refresh rates with increased color information across a high-speed network. Whilst we cannot ignore the learning curve required to build video systems that leverage IP-based video workflows in confidence, I feel it’s something that absolutely makes sense for us all to transition towards.
LD: How do you think AI will impact content creation and the future of media servers?
ON: The thing that I am enjoying the most is how individuals are using AI to build things by writing code via the usage of text prompts. This to me is super exciting in that it can allow individuals to not be constrained by a lack of technical knowledge. I find the influx of ideas is crucial to creativity, so while everyone may have preferences on tools or how AI may factor into their own life, I actually see this as an opportunity for more creative expression.
LD: Please tell us about your panel at LDI - did you work directly with Josh on the Coldplay tour?
ON: I’m very excited to be hosting Josh Koffman for our upcoming LDI panel, Life on the Road: Lessons From Coldplay’s World Tour*. Josh was one of the first people that I worked with when I joined Disguise. At the time he visited our London HQ as he was about to start programming for Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour. Little did I know that three years and 200+ shows later we’d be at LDI covering his experiences in working on one of the most successful tours of all time!
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to talk with him about his overall approach for that tour. I think one of the most exciting things about the tour was its constant evolution - so if you went to see the tour on show #1, it will have had a different look and feel to show #250. That’s a real testament to the work of Josh and his team because they consistently kept pushing and evolving it. We’re hopeful that attendees can really walk away from the session with some interesting learnings.
LD: What advice do you have for people just entering the industry?
Be curious. Stay curious. Curiosity is such a powerful trait because it enables individuals to better understand a problem, and understanding a problem helps provide a solution to said problem. Curiosity has helped me to grow endless times in my career, and seems to be a common thread in those I admire in the workplace too.
Secondly, I would say it always helps to be a nice human being. Being respectful to people is key and helps educate folks on the respect you’d like to be treated with as well. If they’re not, use it as an opportunity to show them how much better it is when everyone in a room has a mutual level of respect and appreciation for one another.
*Life on the Road: Lessons From Coldplay’s World Tour
December 6, 11:15am-12:30pm, W316
Ever wondered what it’s like to pull together the technical strings of a colossal 3.5-year world tour? Hear from screens director Joshua Koffman as he joins Disguise’s project manager for live experiences, Ollie Newland, for a fireside chat to discuss his experience working as the screens director and creative associate on Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour. Revealing the highs (and lows) of life on the road, Joshua will be sharing his on-the-ground insights as well as top tips for technical teams ready to embark on multi-stop global tours. We’ll also be discussing the biggest challenges faced along the way and how he resolved them, including adapting and scaling content to different venues, managing failover, and navigating the diverse technical needs of shows of this scale.