Mo-sys creates visual extravaganza for Live Music Extravaganza

Under the direction of creative director Paul Caslin and production designer Julio Himede of Yellow Studio, Bild Studios creates a massive 360 ​​virtual ‘stadium’ clad in LED screens.

Mo-Sys Engineering has played a central role in the production, certainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, of Live Music Extravaganza live online. Normally held in large venues, this year the production company Image Studios opted for virtual reality with the intention of maintaining the same scope and excitement as any physical show in the past.

Under the direction of the creative director Paul Caslin and the production designer Julio Himede, of Yellow Studio, Bild created a huge 360 ​​virtual stadium clad in LED screens, with a design that would not have been achievable in the real world but has been possible in a virtual environment.

Bild's unique content workflows allowed show content applied to virtual LED screens to be operated live, on a cue-by-cue basis – just like in a physical environment. The hosts of Little Mix were filmed in a large green screen studio, which thanks to virtual studio software Mo-Sys VP Pro combined with graphics Unreal Engine, was filled with happy music fans. The links were filmed with three ARRI cameras on a crane, traveling shot and tripod.

Each camera was equipped with a camera tracking system Mo-Sys StarTracker. These track and capture the precise position and orientation of a camera in six axes thanks to infrared cameras that track reflective points (stars) on the ceiling. By also tracking focus, zoom and lens distortion, presenters and performers can seamlessly blend into the virtual world, regardless of camera movement or lens adjustment.

All composite camera outputs were created in real time, ready for the director to cut live, making the camera work for the virtual production environment not unlike any other live broadcast program.

VFX in real time

David Bajt, co-Founder and director of Bild Studios, comments that "producing the real-time VFX content and supplying the technical engineering for this event was a great pleasure. We especially thank Mo-Sys Engineering for the amazing camera tracking and virtual production technology."

The CTO of Mo-Sys, James Hours, who acted as a technical consultant on the production, explains that "this was a very quick production, only five days for any post-production work required, so we needed to have all the virtual studio materials on camera. As we captured all the component video elements (green screen, key and graphics for each camera) plus all the camera and lens motion data for each camera, for maximum flexibility we were able to offer Bild the option of three workflows."

"Firstly, we had the combined real and virtual elements of all three cameras, with the option to clean up the green screen in post-production. Secondly, if there had been a problem with the graphics, we could keep the shots live and replace the virtual background. And thirdly, the post-production team could go crazy and change everything, keeping the same camera/lens movements around Little Mix," he adds.

For this event, each ARRI camera had its own instance of VP Pro and Unreal Engine. This gave producers the quality output they demanded, with very low latency. "This is not pre-visualization. This is premium production quality," Uren concludes.