Does the music festival really exist?

I saw Project Almanac today and I am not even going to ask about any of the highly illogical time travel events of the movie. Instead I want to ask about one of the events that takes place and the connection to real life.

When the gang travels back 3 months into the past to visit the music festival Loolapalooza (because apparently in the future there are no music festivals to go to), you can see one of the bands playing a concert and you can also see a line up of the festival, featuring famous real life bands like Two Door Cinema Club.

From what I could tell the line up looked extremely realistic, I recognized multiple names. That kind of stuck out to me, because usually in a movie like this you would either make up fake names or don't show the names of the bands at all.

Does this event really exist in the form presented in the movie? (i.e. with the line up shown?)

Did the movie maybe even include real shots from it? The scene were the protagonists are up on the stage with the band showed a crowd which could have easily been filmed during a real concert.

realism project-almanac

Best Answer

They did actually film at Lollapalooza.

Here's an article about the filming in the Chicago Tribune.

When “Project Almanac” wanted to shoot on location at Lollapalooza in 2013, the found-footage film — which revolves around a group of high school students who time-travel to various locations, including the Grant Park music festival — turned to Chicago music promoters Jeff McClusky & Associates to persuade fest organizers C3 Presents.

“Because of how sensitive C3 is to anything invasive to the festival goers’ experience, Paramount (Pictures) asked me to approach them due to my long relationship with C3,” McClusky said over the phone last week. “My role was to get C3 comfortable with the idea and to serve as a music consultant to determine which artists we might use in the film for background music.”

Paramount’s strategy worked. C3 gave the production the green light to film on fest grounds. The scenes reportedly involve the high school students ditching chemistry class to attend Lolla, which they couldn't do prior to building the time machine because they couldn't afford tickets. Filming took place at Lolla for two days and, for the most part, went under the radar.