Zedd: Supported by 4Wall at Coachella

This article was originally posted in PLSNs July edition and can be found here.

Zedd, a renowned DJ, record producer, and songwriter, brings his EDM work to another level, blending electronic dance with pop and classical influences. This was on stage during his Coachella 2025 sets with surprise appearances of guest artists Maren Morris, John Mayer, Elley Duhé, and Bea Miller. The high energy performances were a highlight of the iconic festival. Bringing his signature performance style to the Outdoor Theatre stage, Zedd was supported by a dynamic visual lighting design by Production/Lighting Designer Stevie Hernandez. Hernandez, who has worked with Zedd since 2012, was in turn supported by lighting vendor 4Wall Entertainment. Both Hernandez and 4Wall shared with PLSN a bit about the design and their work on Zedd at Coachella 2025.

Stevie Hernandez: Production/Lighting Designer
On the design: This was a one-off, it was not based off the tour. For this show, I saw what the festival was providing, and I wanted to expand on that. The Outdoor [Theatre] stage is a little over 200' wide. I wanted to take advantage of how wide the space was and kind of frame in; adding in more lighting to make the show work for the looks we need for our show. For all our shows in general, we need a really high energy, really fast-moving lights. We use a lot of different fixtures to have all the sounds represented throughout our set. So, I just added those fixtures at Coachella that I thought were missing in the house package to represent the music.

On the gear choices: We brought in about 96 [ACME] Pixel Lines. We're very heavy on pixel effects. I frame the whole stage, top and bottom, the whole width of the stage with the Pixel Lines. I like that they're great pixels and they have a strobe in the middle, which adds another element. I personally like using them in full DMX mode where we have two rows of pixels per fixture, so it has 16 on top, 16 on bottom, plus the middle white strobe. They're very versatile. You can get a lot of looks out of them. I also used a bunch of [Robe] Pointes. I've been using Pointes pretty much for all my tours and shows since they came out. I love them. I love that they're fast, they're quick and bright and it's probably one of the few fixtures that can do certain looks that I like at a certain BPM. That's why we still use them, even though they are older. We also brought in these newer fixtures, the Ayrton Kyalamis. We brought in 40 of them. I wanted a small fixture to put around the DJ booth that wasn't going to obstruct people from being able to see him. So, we had the whole DJ deck just framing the DJ booth, and they were pretty cool.

On the SFX used: Our show is very choreographed when it comes to the video, lighting, lasers, and pyro. It's all well thought out and properly choreographed. We use our lasers mainly as an effect. So, they are complementing what's going on. We like to reveal the lasers on a song that's just lasers, so it has a WOW factor. The video, lighting, everything shuts off and we try to make the brightest, craziest laser look for the first reveal. We also have tons of pyro-flames and CO2. We go through every single song and figure out how we're going to use the pyro. Figuring out what type of pyro, what color, for what sounds, what hits. As I said, it is very choreographed in all the details.

On 4Wall's support: 4Wall was great. We use them quite a bit and they were great about knocking this one out of the park at such short notice. We were originally supposed to be on a different stage, and we had the design done, we had the gear, we had everything locked in. Then at the last minute we got switched to the Outdoor Stage. We had to, with like a week's notice, put together a new design, and 4Wall had to put together another lighting package for us. We were on the road, on a tour in South America. In my hotel room, I had to come up with another design that was going to work and fit the Outdoor Stage. We couldn't just drop in the other stage design onto the Outdoor Theatre one. But 4Wall was great and they went with it. Everybody on that team worked really hard last minute to pull it all together. It looked really good. It was a cool show.

Andrew Isola & Todd Koval: 4Wall Entertainment Directors of Live Events
On what 4Wall provided for Zedd at Coachella: 4Wall's scope of work at Zedd was twofold. We provided the lighting equipment for the flown and ground packages and the robo-camera systems for Zedd at the Outdoor Theatre. We also assisted Zedd's tour management team with production plots and systems integration with the pre-existing systems for the lighting and video at the Outdoor Theater.

On the change of stages: This particular Zedd project had some unique time challenges. We initially started with a design that was on a different stage for Coachella; a design that was closer to their pre-existing tour package. As we developed the design to fit the stage, the focus went away from the tour package and went more towards a new design that they wanted to present specifically at the festival. That required us to redesign the lighting system for the Coachella show in a rapid timeline. However, as we progressed with the project, it was decided to move the artist to a different stage to allow him to have a larger presence and crowd. That required us to get the updated design and integrate it into the new bigger stage. We had great support from the festival and tour management. Everyone pulled together to make all these changes successful. Everything really worked out due to the hard work and dedication of all parties involved.

On why 4Wall was the right vendor for this project: Our adaptability, customer service, and attention to detail allowed us to make the changes they needed in the timeline allotted.

On supporting Zedd: The Zedd team was really, really nice to work with. They understand production and the challenges you face. They understand once you're working on a project that egos and opinions don't matter. The only thing that matters is that the final product turns out well and that the artist is happy. And we are pleased to have helped realize that result for the Zedd show at Coachella.