ViridianFX get creative for Cat Stevens' legend slot at Glastonbury

ViridianFX, a visual effects house based in the heart of York, were delighted to be given the chance to put together the visual designs and graphics for Yusuf/Cat Stevens' slot at Glastonbury this year.

The York team, which has worked on TV and feature films such as House of The Dragon and Heart of Stone, worked with the legendary artist to wow the crowds at the renowned festival.

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Oswin Wan, art director at ViridianFX, said: "Cat Stevens was very visual in his approach. He had a good understanding of animation and video editing, hence took a different, more hands-on, approach than some of our other collaborators.

"There were many moving parts and people required to take these ideas from concepts to Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage. One of the key challenges was to ensure synchronisation across all the elements, such as music, background visuals and lighting, to ensure a cohesive performance for the audience."

Thousands of people attended Glastonbury over the weekend (Image: PA)

The team said the process was very different to how they work on long-form content - in that the performance is live and any mistakes could not be 'fixed in post'. They relied on great communication with the team around Yusuf - and often himself - to deliver.

Oswin added: "There was a learning curve in the early beginning of this project, in which we tried to understand Yusuf’s idea for all visual contents. It is an art of balance.

"We didn't want the background animations too distracting for those audiences at Glastonbury but we also wanted some interesting visual presentations to bring everyone into Yusuf’s music world as much as possible.

"After weeks seeming less work with Yusuf, we created an animation for his new song Pagan Run from stretch and he really loved it. He described it as ‘absolutely stunning’ and uploaded it to his Youtube channel, getting 24,000 views in one week and great comments from fans."

In total, the ViridianFX team made 27 animations for the Glastonbury show, lasting for one hour and 15 minutes. But, some of them were not shown in the end due to the time limit on the set.

"Everything was generally done in two weeks. It was a huge management job too to create all those completely different stylish animation clips at the same time with constantly updating on each clip," Oswin added.

Elton John closed the festival on the Sunday evening (Image: PA)

The headliners for this year's Glastonbury festival were British rockers Arctic Monkeys, hard rock legends Guns N' Roses and music icon, Elton John, who closed the festival on Sunday with a setlist full of all-time classics.

Sets from across the weekend can be viewed on BBC iPlayer.