The aspiration to create a visual journey for the audience shaped the production, as did the distinctive artistic aesthetic of Hans Zimmer himself, who is able to send the listener on a unique musical journey. As Hans Zimmer's music spans several internationally acclaimed films and numerous different genres, the lighting design also had to be conceived in such a way that it could reflect all these facets in different ways. The range extends from the Asian sounds of a movie like The Last Samurai to the menacing music of The Dark Knight and beyond.

In order to reflect the flow of the themes in the music, Featherstone relies primarily on cues in the design of the show that are fluid and musical, and not too mechanical. Nevertheless, there are moving trusses and architectural elements on the stage. His preferred fixture to realize most of the looks was the Robe MegaPointe, which can also cover the beams typical for rock shows between strongly fanned light. The architecture of the rig was designed so that Zimmer is located in the downstage center while the band and orchestra are placed on risers behind him. The architecture of the rig was designed so that Zimmer is located in the downstage center while the band and orchestra are placed on risers behind him. The stage is also illuminated with plenty of sidelights on both sides with the help of the MegaPointes. The color scheme of the shows reflects the flexibility of the lighting design itself, with everything from pastel looks to razor-sharp saturated hues.

The show itself starts with the title track to the movie Dune, which is also reflected in the light show. The band is cloaked in striking desert tones while the Oscar-winning soundtrack is played. The second score that can be heard is the one from Gladiator. Here Zimmer pays attention to the fact that there are no strong female leads in the film, which is why the idea was to let the music take on this role. The lighting design here also takes the approach of elevating the mood from soft to extremely bombastic. The music from The Dark Knight, on the other hand, is more like a study of order and chaos and everything in between, almost comparable to the eternal battle of good and evil. This plunge from order into (mental) chaos is largely supported by the lighting design, which virtually attacks the audience with wild beams and red blasts from Robe Tetras. As far as the overall color scheme of the tour is concerned, great attention was ultimately paid to the respective storylines of the films for which the music was written.

Along a super great team, Featherstone was especially proud to work together with his daughter Hailey, who acted as tour lighting director. Chris Herman served as programmer on grandMA3, while the pre-programming in Berlin was done by using the Depence multimedia show design & visualization software system. However, Featherstone also points out that the entire project has been highly collaborative. Influences in the design are blurred and the lines in the production overlapped. This can also be seen in the arrangement of light and video content, as the two design elements merge seamlessly. The team's way of working, as well as that of Hans Zimmer himself, is reflected in the entire project process and in the design.

^Credits

• ^{Technical Direction: Tobias Busskamp, Thomas Schmitt}
• ^{Lighting Design: John Featherstone}
• ^{Lighting Director: Hailey Featherstone}
• ^{Lighting Programmer: Chris Herman}
• ^{Scenic Design: Derek McLane}
• ^{Media Design: Peter Nigrini}

^{Lighting Crew}

^{Jens Modigell- crew chief}

^{Sascha Laue- systems and networ}

^{Marvin Jürgens- robo spots and systems}

^{Kevin Schulze-Borgmühl- dimmers}

^{Ludwig Sigel- kabel 1}

^{Christoph Konermann- kabel 2}

^{Mona Rapp- kabel 3}

^{Peter Hermanns- kabel 4}

^{CyberHoists: Tobias Frey, Boris HölscherIngo, Ingo Koenzen, Florian Renisch}

^{Pictures by Lindsay Cave}

The collective phase7 performing.arts under the artistic direction of Sven Sören Beyer was responsible for the creative concept of the opening ceremony as well as its planning and implementation in cooperation with mediapool Veranstaltungsgesellschaft on behalf of the Local Organization Committee Berlin. POOL Group GmbH was responsible for the technical implementation. Flo Erdmann created the lighting design, Raphael Grebenstein acted as lighting director and showlight operator, alongside Johannis Laugwitz as keylight operator as well as Ole Güllich as overhead lighting technician and Younes Rellmann (von|BERG) as gaffer.

The team made extensive use of Depence R3, which was already used during the pitch phase for the creation of the renderings and in the follow-up to the pre-programming in the Solingen studio and finally on site in the Berlin Olympia Stadium. Since there was no full access to the system at first, on-site was initially programmed in Depence and adjustments were successively made to the live system. The location of the headlight systems was done in Vectorworks whereas the setup was imported via MVR into Depence R3. “The clear advantage and the necessity lie in the preparation, which takes place in a relaxed and focused environment. The production time on site did not allow us to implement the programming phase exclusively on the live system, which is why we had to rely on the software solution”, Erdmann says. The implementation of the stadium lighting and the number of fixed devices in the stadium was a challenge for the software, which was solved nonetheless thanks to the excellent Syncronorm support. The stadium's house system was natively incorporated into the GrandMA3 system, and the roof lighting was controlled from both the console and the media server. Parameter expansion was also inevitable in this project and was implemented thanks to Syncronorm. In this way, it was possible to access all local parameters without interfering with the house system, and these could also be programmed in advance, which saved a great deal of time on site. Thanks to the integration of the VizKey in Depence, many network processors could be dispensed with.

The requirement for the lighting design was to illuminate a 360° playable set consisting of the public area, infield, and center stage. In addition, the existing in-house lighting system had to be natively integrated into the lighting programming.  540 moving lights (incl. X5 Bar IP) and approx. 180 LED spotlights were used. The setup was controlled via 4 x GrandMA 3 Fullsize. The roof lighting of the house was additionally controlled by a Pixera media server via pixel mapping. The whole setup was pre-programmed with Depnece R3 at the company von|BERG GmbH in Solingen and visualized in advance. The special feature for Depence R3 was clearly the necessary performance with a total fixture count of over 3500 fixtures (stadium lighting included).

“The performance of Depence R3 once again proved the enormous visual and also technical advantage in the field of visualization software. We were once again able to rely on the excellent support and thank Syncronorm for the great cooperation. A project of this magnitude shows how important it is to be able to rely on your technical partners. Depence R3 offers lighting designers the possibility to focus on the creative work and keeps you stressless with their intuitive software.” – Flo Erdmann, 2023

With the BBC as client, this year's Eurovision lighting design was done by none other than the team around Tim Routledge, winner of multiple TPi Awards, who relied on Syncronorm's multimedia show design and visualization software Depence R3 for the pre-programming of the entire project. Together with his team including associates James Scott, Morgan Evans, Alex Mildenhall, Mark Nicholson, and Tom Young, who were responsible for different aspects of the pre-programming and Depence project, Routledge created over 37 shows, including intros and interlude performances in an amazingly short time.

The preprogramming took place at Neg Earth Lights in London, where the team around Routledge has built a Depence machine especially for this demanding project, running the latest release of the software namely Depence 3.1. In this way the team could rely on the newest features and performance boosts, some of which were developed simultaneously to the ongoing project to make the ESC pre-programming possible. In addition to the Depence visualization the team utilized three GrandMA consoles for the programming process, which were connected via VizKey technology to Depence to enable a flawless, fast, and stable workflow.

For this year, a visualization teaser was created for the first time for the ESC, which was also broadcast by the BBC. Responsible for this Depence visualization was Morgan Evans. The teaser should already give an impression about the design of the stage and the general mood in advance. Thereby, not only generic fixtures were considered but the entire rig, e.g., all kinetic and moving elements, extras like LED tape or prop extras of all delegations. Depence R3 has made the visualization of some special features possible, which cannot be found in any other visualizer. For example, some shows of different delegations required the so-called Star Filter effect on the cameras, which could also be implemented in Depence to create the most realistic image of the different scenes. During pre-programming, over 3000 fixtures with tens of thousands of individual LEDs on more than 300 DMX universes were used, which were also placed in Depence, and which could be visualized without any problem at all. The team also worked very closely with Syncronorm to keep all fixture characteristics and profiles as close to the real devices as possible to ensure the most accurate pre-production.

Read the full story of Syncronorm's involvement with even more information in the latest issue of TPi magazine here.

The lighting for this year's Superbowl was designed by Al Gurdon and was based on one thing above all else and that was functionality. This was mainly due to the number and combination of fixtures used, which was composed of the following:

• _{146 Vari-lite VL3600 Profile}
• _{72 Robe Robin 1200}
• _{35 Vari-lite VL2600}
• _{325 GLP X4}
• _{76 TMB Solaris Flare}
• _{3 MA Lighting grandMA3 Full Size}
• _{1 MA Lighting grandMA3 Lite}
• _{6 Strong Gladiator IV}
• _{6 Britebox Flame LT3000}
• _{6 PRG Best Boy Ground Control Long Throw}
• _{4 MDG The One}
• _{8 Reel EFX Diffusion DF-50}
• _{8 Reel EFX Fans}
• _{2 zactrack PRO servers}
• _{4,200 PixMob Nova}
• _{12 PixMob IR Transmitters}
• _{7 PixMob Kore Receiver}

"When approaching a previz project, especially one of this scale, we always look towards Depence as our preferred previz software. The flexibility, fidelity, and efficiency offered by the program helps us to create previz projects that are useful tools in both the design and programming process. For this Super Bowl Half Time Show, we utilized DMX motors to simulate the moving platforms, and NDI video input to replicate the under-platform lighting that was provided by PixMob. Depence's toolset allowed us to begin rehearsals with all of our homework complete while simultaneously allowing us to create a full animation of the show that we were able to share with the rest of the creative team." // Nick Coauette, Earlybird 2023

The physical layout of the fixtures on the halftime show can definitely be described as "straight forward”, due to a unique environment with many complex factors to how and where fixtures can be hung. Once the design was finalized, Earlybird took an approach that focused primarily on how to best utilize the fixtures effectively given the hang and very large area to light. Huge straight trusses finally complement the design, which is also meant to maintain its charisma from afar. The distances in the stadium are a challenge especially for a light show, which the team mastered with bravura.

The demand on their own work was to have an almost perfectly running show for the first rehearsal. Since there are only 3 nights of rehearsal with all cameras, cast, and scenery; being prepared for these small windows was vital to the success of the lighting team on the show. For Earlybird, Depence was a powerful tool in helping assess the approach for lighting the scenery and cast, while learning how to best work around the huge distances within the stadium. Artistically Depence could help with the assessment of the design ideas, becoming both a design and programming tool throughout the process.

Line of sight was another incredibly important part of the show. The team had to be aware of the background throughout the performance as the camera direction was very specifically changing which direction the story was being told in. The DMX camera feature in Depence helped the team replicate the camera storyboard therefore allowing key light and the background composition to be allocated based on the direction of each shot. Depence was also used to simulate the various platform automation positions in the show. These were programmed in Depence with the help of simulated motors and adapted to the sequence, giving the programming team the complete picture at all times.

Although they had almost no time to spend with the real set, the lighting team were perfectly prepared for the show thanks to the help of Depence and the incomparable realism of the visualization.

_{Designer: Al Gurdon
Lighting Director: Ben Green
Lighting Director: Harry Forster
Lighting Director/Programmer: Eric Marchwinski (Earlybird)
Lighting Director/Programmer: Mark Humphrey
Pre-viz/Depence Tech: Nick Coauette (Earlybird)
Vendor: PRG}

The design work at GERDON is still classically done in tools like Cinema4D and Vectorworks, but it gets specifically interesting when the first design drafts can be loaded into Depence, and the team can control their design from a GrandMA console for the first time. The MVR workflow is especially helpful here, so that as little time as possible is spent translating between the different software "worlds." So, positions, rotations, fixture types and patches come right along, and the system is ready to play right away. Depence greatly helps the team at GERDON look at the design in real time from different angles. This way they can get a good idea of possible lighting positions already in the design process. Also, the content connection on the different LED surfaces via NDI helps a lot to control the viewing angle and arrangement of the different screens.

“Compared to productions without Depence in preparation, the very fast availability of fixtures is definitely an advantage for us. We had 100 Ayrton Cobras in use, which were just new at the time of pre-programming. Depence visualized these in great detail; this of course saves a lot of work on site. I think the Depence software is on the right track not only to be a visualization software, but also as an intermediate tool to bring the process from initial design drafts to production implementation and on-site support closer together and simplify it significantly.” // Marek Papke (Gerdon Design)

https://gerdon.tv/de/

Live Pictures of show content by Julian Huke

Behind the scenes pictures by Gerdon Design

Demonthy, who was entrusted with the conception and realization of the lighting design for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022, is otherwise active in the fields of TV, automotive, special events, live and musical design. This time he relied on Syncronorm's show design and visualization software Depence to express his creative ideas and visual output. His connection to the ESC reaches way back to 2017 and 2018, when he had the opportunity to work as Lighting Director for the big brother of this event, held in Portugal at the time. In addition, Demonthy has provided lighting design support to several delegations at the ESC.

The Junior ESC is basically a smaller version of the worldwide known and popular music format, in which various artists compete against each other, and at the end of which the audience of the participating countries votes to determine the winner. However, in terms of effort and staging, the JESC does not have to hide from its larger variant. Broadcasters such as the BBC also broadcast the show to the 16 participating countries, while the show reached over 33 million viewers.

For the 2022 edition of the show, Demonthy can call on a great creative team that brought a lot of experience to the production. Chris Moylan, light designer and light operator took over the complete show light programming for this job. Matthias Schöffmann programmed the media servers. Matthias Hagel programmed the key light and follow spots, he was also at the ESC 2011 in Düsseldorf. Tobias Heydthausen was there as lighting design assistant and during the rehearsals as contact person for the delegations. Nick Charalampidis, also a veteran in the ESC business, was server engineer. Christian Glatthor and Matthias Held were responsible for the Follow-Me System.

To make his workflow for the production of the JESC as optimal as possible, Demonthy turned to Syncronorm’s Depence visualizer for preproduction. First, he drew his designs in Vectorworks to take the venue's technical specifications into account. This drawing was then imported into Depence using MVR export, and it was already here that the first benefits of pre-production visualization became clear to him, as he was able to check whether all the angles and positions created were suitable for the lighting.

“In the next step, I immediately use this file to create renderings. And there I have to say for me that Depence is in my opinion, for fast realistic renderings exactly the right tool, where I can create live quickly and effectively my light images and it is not far from the real world, but I have often had that customers have asked me whether it is now real or yet rendered.” - Raphaël Demonthy, 2022

The set design of the JESC was mostly shaped by the video-ready LED tubes, which frame the stage above and below. Demonthy tried to enhance the stage itself by using the lighting design to let it appear much bigger than it was. For this effect he tried to fill the gaps of the stage with lighting. This means that the traverses in the stage area, which are arranged in a circular manner to follow the shape of the stage, can offer the possibility for individual looks for every participating country. In this way, totally different looks for each show could be achieved, while the stage is staying the same. 8 of the traverses can also be brought into different positions and angles due to C1 motors to achieve different looks. To that the team also relied on additional C1 light pods, which were equipped with ClayPaky Axcor 600 profiles.

The main LED wall is framed by Tambora Battens, because Demonthy was meaning to give this part of the wall special attention in terms of visually strengthen the outer lines of the video content design. Left and right to the stage, spot and wash lines were placed to achieve the desired effect of widening the stage to give it more presence and radiance. Both catwalks which are leading from the stage to the green room, where each candidate is resting in between shows, are framed by Mythos 2 as well as Mini-Bs.

“Since I had already created the file for the renderings, it was obvious that we also do the complete pre-programming with Depence. But with the size of the system, we are talking about a lighting system of over 1,200 fixtures + C1 + LED tubes etc., we were not quite sure if the performance is sufficient and we have to say we would not have expected it, but the performance in terms of fluidity, which affects extreme timings as well as the much better real representation of light properties of the fixtures and the effect on objects is a lot better in Depence than with another popular visualizer from Canada.” – Demonthy

Full Equipment List of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022:

^{78x CP Scenius Spot}

^{70x CP Scenius Unico}

^{60x CP Axcor Profile 600}

^{36x CP Shotlight wash}

^{72x CP Arolla MP}

^{22x CP Arolla HP}

^{92x Lightsky F230}

^{80x CP Mythos 2}

^{85x CP Beye K25}

^{80x CP Beye K20}

^{22x FineArt 1537 Led Wash}

^{42x CP K10 Wash}

^{60x FineArt 1519 Pixie}

^{200x Mini-B’s}

^{94x CP Tambora Batten}

^{94x CP Tambora Linear}

^{40x PR lighting Bar}

^{30x M1500 Led Par}

^{6x MDG}

^{6x Fan}

As programming days on location are becoming more and more short, Demonthy praises the possibilities of Depence in terms of preprogramming at the Prefocus studio in Berlin beforehand. He also states that the real-life parameters of fixtures are a huge help while doing so, as much more knowledge about every lighting fixture out there is needed while using visualizers from other companies. With Depence, he is able to work as close to reality as possible due to the real-time lighting behavior of the fixtures. For Demonthy, the combination of different components such as NDI or C1 and the nonetheless stable and high frame rate is also a big win.

“The bottom line is that it was really fun to design the lighting with Depence and we are very confident that it will bring us even further forward for future projects.”

_{(c) pictures on location by Optikalusion}

Light Art Studios, a young five-headed preprogramming studio, newly established in Hamburg, Germany were responsible for this year’s creative part of lighting design at the venerable German entertainment show “Wetten, dass..?”. The show around cult presenter Thomas Gottschalk attracts an audience of millions every year and is structured around bets to be won by various participants. In addition, world-famous show acts also perform and heat up the audience between the bets.

The studio, in which the preprogramming for these shows took place, includes two fixed lighting desk workstations and an optional additional workstation as well as a dedicated 3D workstation. The team is primarily active in the areas of TV, concert, touring, theater, musicals, trade shows, advertising and corporate. A special feature of the new studio in Hamburg is also that it is open to other designers and operators.

As for the show act itself, no other than famous music acts such as Robbie Williams, Tate McRae, the Moulin Rouge musical show and famous German singer-songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer were entertaining the audience in between the candidates and their bets. Light Art Studios worked very closely with the lighting designers of the various acts, to ensure a fabulous show experience for the live audience as well as everyone in front of their TVs. Lucas Hoyer, employee at the studio, thereby did the work on the Depence file while preprogramming. Raphael Grebenstein was responsible for the lighting direction and operation for all four show acts. The main client for the production was the German TV channel ZDF, on which the program was also broadcast. ZDF also provided the responsible Director of Photography Volker Schmidt and Tom Stockinger as well as the operators for deco light and white light. The decorative light was set up on site by ZDF as well.

“Depence is an integral part of our workflow, both to quickly present results to clients in the form of renderings, to check feasibility in set designs, and to pre-program productions and save time and money on location.” – Raphael Grebenstein, 2022

In their workflow, Light Art Studios first worked with Vectorworks to draw the plans for the show concept, this also included addressing the lights on stage. The set design was then mostly created in Cinema4D, which was then edited and polished again in Depence. The same applies to the LED wall and UV mapping. In Depence, all the threads then came together, and the various project elements were merged thanks to the extensive import functions of the software. This was followed by an adjustment of the respective textures. In the Depence project, different layers have now been created to manage the shows of the four acts. The camera movements were then carried out via DMX camera.

“Since we now have 3D CAD plans available in 90% of cases anyway, the import into Depence is done quickly and so results can be achieved quickly even on the road without a lighting desk. Fast support is also another PLUS.”

The project itself relied on the following equipment:

^{170x Martin Mac Encore}

^{160x Elation Smarty Hybrid}

^{61x Martin Mac Quantum}

^{51x Robe Robin 800 LED}

^{JB Lighting Sparx18}

^{5x Robe Forte Followspot}

^{3x Robe Forte}

^{19x GLP S350}

^{58x GLP JDC-1}

^{180x Expolite Tourled42}

^{12x GLP creativ light1}

 ^{48x Varilite VL5 LED}

 ^{06x GrandMA3 light}

 ^{12x GrandMA3 PU}

 ^{13x GrandMA3 8port Node}

 ^{2x GrandMA3 4port Node}

Live-Picture Credit: ZDF / Sascha Baumann

“Pre-visualizing a performance is a common workflow for any of our projects” says Anders Rahm, a longstanding member of the Cudi visual team and EP/CD of the project and Partner at Raw Cereal. “On many occasions, we’ve been able to show Scott/Cudi what his performance will look like to the audience and make notes or comments from the comfortable location of a rehearsal studio. Our pre-visualization phase with Depence allows us to plan each show before it loads-in and show any of our clients the lighting, video, special effects, and more, all programmed beforehand.”

Lighting Designer and Programmer of the project, Austin Schneider also uses Depence anywhere he can, and comments on the high frame rates on his portable machine. “On a plane or backstage at a festival, having Depence in my pocket gives me confidence that my programming is ready for the live show and my presets will match what is onstage. Programming brings out the details in the music, and Depence brings out the details in the production that I can see up close on a screen down to the pixel, which is very necessary with today’s multi-instance and pixelated fixtures.”

Alongside the Raw Cereal team, laser operator and programmer Macy Rupp with StrictlyFX used Depence to pre-program the lasers for this performance as well, making it a cohesive workspace for the best show possible.

“The workflow is too simple”, says Jacob VanVlymen, Associate Designer and Technical Director on the project. “We were able to move from Vectorworks to Depence using MVR during the design process, showing us what we needed to see and even test ideas. There are no hoops to jump through and it works, our creativity has no limits when using Depence.”

“We will continue to use Depence as our pre-vis tool, and we look forward to seeing the software become the best it can be, allowing us to provide our clients with the best shows we can come up with, much thanks to Depence for the great product.” Cort Lawrence, EP/CD and Partner at Raw Cereal.

Creative Direction:

• Raw Cereal
• Anders Rahm
• Cort Lawrence

Screens Director:

• Raw Cereal
• Eric May
• Grant Draper

Show Design:

• Raw Cereal
• Austin Schneider
• Jacob VanVlymen

Laser Programming:

• Macy Rupp

^{picture copyright by alivecoverage}

The three shows took place on three consecutive weekends. The team, that dealt with the lighting and video side for these special shows consisted of light and video designer Roland Greil, associate designer Troy Eckerman, studio associate and LX programmer Michael Kuehbandner, LX programmer Klaus Kubesch, video programmers Leo Hermann and Tom Levin as well as video director Haegar De. The previsualization suite, running the Depence software system, was built by THE X4 COLLECTIVE under the directive of Markus Neubauer.

“For me and the whole team Depence was a great support in the realization of the three shows in Munich. Without such a Previz set up, we would not have been able to cope with the workload and deliver such detailed shows. Especially the detail accuracy of the system and the realistic reproduction are impressive and made our work easier.” – Roland Greil, Light & Video Designer

As the creation of the Depence visualization was a key element in preparing the actual shows, performance of the files was given some very special attention, while nonetheless keeping the visualization of the stage, musicians, live crowd as well as the whole architecture around as detailed as possible. This gave the show design team the best possible outcome to get going with their ideas. To display the different stage setups of the artists, layers were applied within the Depence project, and all fixtures were multi-patched within the lighting desk. The previz suit itself along with all technical requirements was built within a climatized container in the backstage area of the stage. A wide 50” screen along with four 21” screens were placed for each working space and a DMX camera was used to program various virtual viewpoints as well as fly overs via GrandMA console. Possible video streams from the local Disguise Server were transformed from HDMI signal into NDI and thus streamed into the Depence Server.

“The Depence mapping editor was a great help in dealing with the video surfaces. The outputs of the Disguise VX 4 server came into the system via HDMI->NDI converters and could thus be mapped to the video surfaces without any problems. The resulting latencies were pleasantly low. By consistently optimizing all of the 3D objects in our model, the overall performance was equally pleasing given the scale of the project!” – Markus Neubauer, THE X4 COLLECTIVE

Since it was critical for the modeling of the Depence project to be as accurate as possible, actual 3D models of the architecture were first created in and exported from Vectorworks, then optimized in Cinema 4D to get the best result resource-wise and finally imported to Depence. The stage itself was over 130 meters in width, 65 meters deep and 20 meters high and placed on an open-air area with around 100.000 square meters. The mapping of the massive LED walls used for the concerts was also done directly in Depence, all with the help of the integrated mapping editor. To that, one special facet of the visualization was the realistic and functioning display of the semi-transparent LED wall in the center of the design as well as the mapping of the Neonflex LEDs all along the edges of the stage and it’s back. The patching of the project was done in Vectorworks as well and then was easily imported via MVR file into Depence.

“As a Studio Associate, i am in charge of translating Roland's design ideas into technical planning documents from the very beginning and it was especially important to me to have a pre-programming that is as close to reality as possible and at the same time performant enough to represent this enormously large stage and terrain. Due to the close cooperation with Markus Neubauer and our common experiences from many previous Depence projects, we succeeded again this time.” – Michael Kuehbandner

Equipment used:

• 479x Movinglights
• 429x intelligent Lights
• 164x 8 light Blinder
• 18x MDG ATME
• 18x LOOK ORCA
• 5x GrandMA 3 Full Size im 2er Mode
• 8x GrandMA2 NPUs
• 40960 MA Parameter available, around 32000 used Parameters

www.x4.design

Bavaria Sounds LX & Video Creative Crew:

^{Tom Levin Schwenzle | Video Programmer & Design Assistant}

^{Haegar Deutsch | IMAG Director}

^{Michael Kuehbandner | Studio Associate & LX Programmer}

^{Roland Greil | Lighting and Video Designer}

^{Bianca Mastroianni | FollowMe}

^{Troy Eckerman | Associate Designer}

^{Leo Herrmann | Video Programmer}

^{Klaus Kubesch | LX Programmer}

We have talked to Yevhenii Poriadyn, main man behind the studio, who gave us some interesting insights at three totally different design approaches the designers have created within the last couple of months and even back to mid Covid pandemic.

At first, we have Laser Studio creating a show for the presentation of the latest Toyota Land Cruiser 300 model, which had to be done mid pandemic with full respect for the safety of the audience. The event agency which had worked for Toyota came to Laser Studio because they proposed to do a virtual 360° presentation, which then was realized with the help of Depence. The flexibility in creating textures and materials in Depence, was a huge help to the realization of the project, as the car was modelled in a most realistic 3D model and then presented in an exact 3D copy of the Kyiv metro room. Set designer Sandro Koridze created a fantastic virtual light show, which accompanied the presentation most phenomenal. The show was programmed via lighting desk in the studio and then streamed via DMX. The project then was rendered in stunning 4K 360° video quality.

The second project, Yevhenii told us about is the opening show for the all-new Bucha Shopping Center in the suburbs of Kyiv. The customer asked Laser Studio for a specialized multimedia show with a focus on maximum accuracy. For this reason, Laser Studio again relied on Depence and its powerful visualization capabilities. The modelling took place in Depence only, after receiving detailed drawings provided by the client. The shopping centre’s architecture was emphasized to build a fitting light show afterwards as centre for the stage performance. It was decided to mainly use high-power laser projections, all included 1:1 in the extensive Depence fixture library, simulating reality in a detailed and accurate way. Building the actual show was then coordinated very well due to the detailed Depence visualization and its compatibility to Pangolin Beyond. Therefore, all preparations of the laser content were as well done in Depence.

Finally, Yevhenii introduced us to a third project, done with Depence. The most recent show case depicts the opening celebration of a factory near the city of Kryvyi Rih. The show was given some extra with the implementation of a drone show, which was enhanced by laser effects from the ground. Depence perfectly fit for the task because of the complexity of the show as all features could be visualized in one. The location area is 60.000 square meters with the Kryvyi Rih National University as centre of the installation. The show consisted of 150 drones as well as four towers spread over 100 meters where 16 laser projections were integrated.

“Depence is a fantastic program that renders beautiful videos and images. This makes it possible for technical services to be prepared in advance.” - Yevhenii Poriadyn, Laser Studio UA, 2022

www.laserstudio.kiev.ua

After a two-year delay due to Covid-19, production designer Manfred Nikitser and Depence engineer Otto Schildknecht spent 12 hours per day working on getting everything up and running for the “Rock Believer” World Tour 2022/23. In their pop-up studio, everything revolved around a 68-inch flat screen that was mounted at the back of the room. On display was a Depence animation of the Scorpions playing on stage, vivid flames shooting left and right behind them, and a mass audience cheering them on. Manfred’s grandMA3 console was set up right in front of the screen, while half a dozen laptops and computers were organized into individual workspaces around. From behind, the buzzing sound of a massive server rack filled the silence. Usually, however, recordings of the Scorpions were heard all day long. Manfred explains that “our work here at pre-programming is targeted at connecting and creating the dynamic between all visual elements, which we will have in Vegas, on-site. We have set up the entire network here in the studio the way it will be in the venue, to make sure all components are speaking to each other and also to pre-program the show as efficiently as we can, before everything comes together.”

The Scorpions’ residency took place at Zappos Theater at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas from 26 March to 16 April 2022. The show presents an entire new stage set, video content and lighting design. In addition, the Scorpions premiered brand new songs from their latest album “Rock Believer”. Not only was the album just released at the beginning of this year, but it also bears the title of the world tour that will take place right after the residency, continuing until 2023.

With new tunes mixed with the old classic hits, it was important for Manfred to get his new design ideas across to the band and the management as best as possible. Using Depence was the way to go since, according to Manfred, “it is always easy to talk about things but it’s much better if you can show them through a moving image. So, rendering all these ideas and showing the band a video with music, like ‘this is what I am talking about’ and not talking in theory but rather having something to show that is close to reality, was very important.”

This was especially the case with visualizing the beginning of the show since one major focus of the new production design was to deliver a strong opening. Manfred remembers that it “was something we looked into in detail very early. We pre-programmed an idea of how the show opening can be and presented that to the band. Thanks to Depence it was possible to show the opening in a dynamic way, by recording all the elements in the upfront and then rendering it afterwards. That gave us a level of quality that we didn’t have in the past.” Manfred adds that “we pushed it really to the limits of what is possible by involving special characters, by involving the built-in audience within Depence, also by involving kinetics, et cetera, to really show the dynamics within the production design and to give the band options for extras, such as lasers or other elements, pyro, all of that. This was not planned but just to show ‘ok, we could do this in this song and this in that song’.”

Even beyond visualizing lighting looks and effects, Manfred emphasizes that “Depence was a huge asset throughout the entire process, not just for the production design process but also for the construction design phase.” While pre-programming had just started at the studio in Hamburg, the stage set, at this point, was already designed, built, and en route to Las Vegas.

On planning the stage set, Manfred explains that his goal was to create “a steel metal analogue look in a traditional rock’n’roll way.” To facilitate this creation process, he elaborates that “one of my personal key assets for this design, other than the easy workflow with the MVR export, was the usage of PBR materials. That gave me the option to look in detail into the haptics of the set design before even thinking about lighting,” adding that “once the set architecture and dimensions were planned and approved by our production management, we went through different PBR materials and did a lot of renderings.” The outcome is a spherical architecture, constructed out of metal grids that were specifically chosen, custom cut and colored for this set. Its arch structure serves as an optical rupture to the overall linear lighting and rig construction surrounding the stage. The pyramid- shaped drum riser that stands in front of the set is built with same material, completing the overall analogue characteristic of the stage set design.

With only a few days in the theater to rehearse and to prepare for opening night, the ability to visualize all the looks and ideas as precisely as possible has been key to creating and programming this show in advance. Regarding the overall development process, Manfred concludes that “Depence closes the gap within production designing phases because it is a software that finally involves all the elements that are used within entertainment.” As a last statement, he adds that “we are all very ambitious when it comes to presenting ideas and, finally, we have a tool that allows us to connect all the different technologies, such as lasers, lighting, video, all of that, in one software and render it in a quality where you stop and think ‘is this a photo or is this a rendering?’” Now, at last, the design is neither a photo nor a rendering. It has finally become a live experience to be enjoyed in Las Vegas.

Using Depence, Heberling was able to create detailed renderings following the design drawing process. The previz setup covered the lighting setup as well as all video surfaces and automation as the show was fed by media servers and had moving trusses in it. In this way the team was able to make out what was working for the show and what did not. The video design was made by content artist Eddie Mandell, Heberling and content house Greenwall Designs. The video programmer and show operator was Ishai Mika, who put together all loose ends and, by relying on Depence, made sure the LD had a full and realistic overview of the show during all preparations. Meanwhile creative director Sacha Jean-Baptiste made sure all areas, the band as well as the dancers were blend. Depence gave the opportunity to send updates and samples of the show and was the foundation for discussions and feedback within the creative process here too.

Although Depence comes with many extensive features to directly export magnificent high-quality renderings, the lighting team of Zara Larsson decided to capture the not less impressive real time rendering capabilities of the software. With quality tuned to the max, the captured output was directly sent to a cloud system, which allowed the creatives to immediately work on changes for the show. Greenwall Designs were running some heavy hardware machines in their previz studios, which in addition allowed them to render different parts of the rig besides the captured material.

Early in the process Gabre rendered 360° panorama material from different positions in the virtual venue. In this way he was able to get his head around potential issues and future challenges during the production period. The whole project had an interesting twist to it though, all because the lighting designer is living in Chicago, USA. Using Depence was a perfect way to present the stage and lighting design to him from within the virtual venue on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The design team was able to visualize the show from the audience’s perspective which was another great advantage.

“I have been using the software for about 18 months by now and rendered some really impressive results as well as running extremely heavy projects with 200+ universes and I think that the software is one of a kind but more importantly it is really easy to learn.” – Isak Gabre, 2022

The possibility to import all kinds of project data such as DMX patching, unit number data as well as different kinds of animated objects, moving people and Sketchup files into Depence also helped Gabre in his job as a previz engineer.

“For example, the venue was recently laser scanned by 3d-magician Edvard Hansson and the implementation of those very high detailed models was just too easy. I was afraid that this would slow down the Depence project file too much, but we didn't even notice a change in either quality or fps.”

Working on a lot of theater projects Gabre mainly uses Depence to share information in the creation process of renderings and planning. With Depence he can identify and highlight problems within the design but at the same time can come up with possibilities early in the creation process.

"Looking ahead, I don't think anyone can afford not to use software like Depence to get an early head start and refine the quality of production rehearsals and expensive real stage time. I would say that regardless of the type of project, there are real benefits to being as prepared as possible, avoiding as many unpleasant surprises as possible, and diving right into creativity."

_Credits

_{Anders Heberling - Director & Designer}

_{Isak Gabre - Programmer/Operator & Pre-viz Engineer}

_{Eddie Mandell, Anders Heberling, Greenwall Designs - Video Content Design}

_{Ishai Mika - Video Programmer & Show Operator | Live Footage Recordings}

_{Sacha Jean-Baptiste - Creative Director}

_{Edvard Hansson - Venue Scanning}

_{Andre Jofre - Content for "Never Forget You"}

Ti²² Design specializes in the live, concert and touring side of the entertainment industry, while Depence is being used both for creating initial pitches for stages as well as for the previsualization of shows. We spoke to Elliott Mountford, Director at Ti²² Design, who gave us some interesting thoughts on his work with Depence.

“Depence helped us on this project particularly because I couldn't fly to the states - And I was working with a USA programmer/operator. Depence allowed me to render out exactly what I wanted it to look like […].” - Elliott Mountford, Director Ti²², 2021

As the festivals played by LA based pop rock band HAIM needed to be designed and preprogrammed from London, Syncronorm’s multimedia show design and visualization software Depence was a huge help in the overall workflow of Ti²² Design. The support of .MVR files in Depence made it possible to easily import the stage drawings and to fluently get going with the show design. As the stage rig was changed for different venues, adjustments could be made very quick and effectively, especially for the festival house rig. The virtual camera of Depence also helped a lot to simulate different angles regarding the stage and to see where improvements could be made, also from the audiences’ perspective, as the indoor festival was a seated event. The team at Ti²² Design was also able to bring in NDI into the LED screen model from Resolume to test out various video content and to see whether all was working in combination with the lights.

“I’m most looking forward Depence becoming the new standard for festival previz, having lights, lasers, and video all together. […] Having a new industry standard for these departments will make everyone work closer together, rather than separately.”

After two years on hold, the elite E-Sports event finally took place again with a real-life audience and was streamed simultaneously on Twitch, the worldwide place to be streaming platform when it comes to video games. The CS:GO category was instantly rocketing to the 5th place of the worldwide Twitch streams as well as the 7th place in the top 10 most popular E-Sports events in all history. With a sum of 2 million US Dollar the tournament also had the biggest prize pool in the history of the Counterstrike franchise.

The team at Syncronorm is more than proud that the creatives at Bombee Event Production took advantage of the Depence multimedia show design system, which was used in great extend to help creating this stunning event. We also had the chance to have a word with Edvard Hansson, lighting designer and operator at the event, who gave us some insight in his work.

“Having a modern, powerful and advanced platform like Depence that specializes in our industry and utilizes these modern techniques opens up the possibilities to be more creative and improve the situation awareness for all parts involved, improving the end product as a whole for our customers.” – Edvard Hansson, 2021

The Depence system was mainly used to virtualize the whole venue, Hansson tells us. Cameras were implemented virtually as well as the NDI video input and automation which was sent directly from the game played at the event. The stage design and lighting design where also virtualized by using Depence, Hansson says. The trussing was imported via MVR. File support directly into Depence, which helped a great deal to display the venue as detailed as it was scanned beforehand. Main highlight of the production and workflow was the 3D spatial scanning of the venue, which then was transferred to Depence. This grants the maximum level of virtual detail as seen in the renderings of the event. With the scans, the team created a point cloud consisting of 9.8 billion points from a total of 21 scanning locations inside the venue.

“As our industry grows and more advanced technologies evolve, we believe we will see more features from other established industries like the gaming industry, construction industry or maybe IoT.”

Customer: Valve / PGL

Bombee Event Production AB:

Project Management / Logistics: Gustav Karlsson
Stage Designer: Thomas "Toiva" Savolainen
Game Automation and LED content: Philip Björkebro
Lighting Designer / Operator: Edvard Hansson
Photos: Edvard Hansson (Bombee) / Stephanie Lindgren (PGL)
Depence Renders: Edvard Hansson

Everything regarding stage logistics, design, rigging, lighting, LED, SFX and stage systems were planned and supplied by Bombee Event Productions AB.

Rig Specs:

526 sqm of LED
2104 LED panels
36,4 million pixles
759kw power
103 hoists
17 trailers with equipment
477 lighting fixtures
9x4k Video outputs to feed the LED screens
6600pcs cables
655m truss

„We do not play by the rules and in fact, there are no rules other than those we create for ourselves.” This was the mission which production company OTD Global got from client company Rapyd on their first meeting and the lead motive with which they began their creative process. The goal was to create more than a simple event, which ultimately ended up in a super creative event campaign involving various companies, creatives as well as artists.

Together with their client OTD Global, lighting & stage designers LEAD created “The Moment”. A new and anonymous brand with resulted in a massive 10-days-long event which was happening in various places all over Israel’s capital city of Tel-Aviv. The eye-catching triangle symbol, which was created for the “The Moment” and which was a central design element of this corporate event, was ever present over all of Tel-Aviv within this exciting week, packed with intriguing pop-up parties featuring famous top tier DJs, branded merchandise, drones in the skies and much more. After ten days, finally, the title “Rapyd” was revealed. The highlight of the campaign was the company's party, which included almost 12 hours of music played by some of the world’s most known DJ’s: Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Martin Garrix, Nervo, Skazi and Intected Mushrooms. This massive event took place in two different locations – it began on the rooftoop of Tel Aviv’s famous Azrieli towers and continued into a crazy after party in Expo TLV that ended 12 hours later. The campaign generated huge attention and attracted public relations and interest among potential employee audiences.

The triangle shape was key to the design of the whole event. Taken from “The Moment” logo it has been used as a repetitive motive in different variations along the design. This also is reflected in the event layout, which features a 250 meters large triangular truss ceiling, light arrangements, LED screens and ultimately a huge triangle made of 16 Jorgos RGBW LED fixtures that were pixel mapped. This key element changed its angle and position above the stage through the length of the evening.

LEAD made extensive use of the Depence show control & visualization system by Syncronorm to plan and realize the stage as well as lighting design for this event: “The integration with Vectorworks through MVR saves a lot of time and it feels smooth and easy to draw in Vectorworks and render and pre-visualize in Depence.” Omer tells us. For LEAD, the greatest advantage regarding Depence is the rendering engine, which allows to create stunning visuals including most realistic materials and textures which respond to light as in the real world. They also made extensive use of the mass crowd feature, which lets you fill a huge stadium with thousands of virtual people with a couple of mouse clicks.

„Added to that it helps the designer to test and examine new concepts and ideas it has also been a huge time and money saver. The fact we are being able to pre-program a whole show in our studio and save time on set is a huge gamechanger for us, for the production and for all involved vendors.“ – Omer Israeli, LEAD, 2021

The Team involved:

Production Company: OTD Global
Client: The Moment (By Rapyd)
Technical Director: Rei Ben Tzvi, Jacob Glickman
Head Producers: Dana Klein, Liron Merker
Creative Director: Adi Lipsky
Event Designer: Shlomi illani
Light & Stage Design: LEAD (by Omer Israeli & Dor Aichner)
Lighting Operators: Naor Bonomo, Omer Israeli, Andrea Beckerman, Erik Mahowald, Gabe Fraboni
Video Content: Studio Insight, TwoFiftyK
Lasers Operator: Dor Aichner
Lights & Sound Vendor: Sincopa ltd.
Stages & Truss Vendors: Stage Design ltd.
LED Screens Vendors: Kolshar ltd, CleanLED Ltd
Neonflex & LED Tubes: LEDArts ltd.
Lasers: Saar Lasers, NRGSound
SFX & Pyro: MegaNight
Photographers: Eclipse Media, Ran Bergman

More info:

https://www.instagram.com/leadgrp/

https://www.facebook.com/leadgrpil

https://otdglobal.com/

https://jointhemoment.net/

Unforgettable performances and emotional speeches: the MTV Video Music Awards 2021 were packed with highlights featuring international artists such as Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo, Normani, Busta Rhymes and more.

Held September 12^th at the Barclays centre in Brooklyn, NY, the  37^th MTV Video Music Awards were hosted by Doja Cat and celebrated 40 years of MTV. The production design was done by Julio Himede from Yellow Studio whereas the lighting design was created by Tom Sutherland of DX7 Design. The team at DX7 used Depence to animate and render a showcase to show the full potential of the design to the producers and incoming artists.

www.dx7design.com

“Syncronorm means quality products with no compromise.” – Steve Bewley, Mandylights, 2021

We had the pleasure to speak with Steve, designer and director over at Mandylights, who gave us some glorious insight into the team’s tremendous work.

You have pre-programmed and visualized the show with Depence. Which features were of most benefit to you?

„Depence has been a game changer for our business and has allowed us to visualize, program and create stunning designs like never before. D2 really has filled a huge void that was missing in the industry and is now a piece of software that we use daily to help us create designs for concerts, architectural, corporate events, light art and much more.“

Any thoughts on the future of our industry and on how Depence comes into play?

„The future of our industry is very bright indeed as we use Depence more and more and push what it’s capable of we will see truly amazing results. As we are now able to visualize pretty much anything there is no limit to what we can create and put forward to our clients. I see D2 only getting better and better as it develops and that can only be a good thing for our industry, already we are seeing people using D2 in a variety of creative ways with stunning results.“

Do you see an advantage for your personal workflow? Which features are most convincing regarding your work?

„We absolutely love all of the features, we use everything from characters to importing 3d models and MVR files from vectorworks. The video features are simply amazing and the fact we can do green screen to create stunning virtual worlds is simply amazing. I could list all of the features here but I’ll simply say we use all of them and love them all!“

„Depence has transformed the quality of the pre visualising of our live performance shows in a way like never before. We really can show a client exactly how their show will look and using the software will save them hundreds of thousands in pre production fees as we can now do pretty much everything in the virtual world.“

At the festival, company Siyan who were supplying the house equipment, were running Depence, which allowed all incoming Lighting Designers to have the option to pre-visualize their show if required. The stage had 2 massive IMAG screens on either side, displaying a live camera feed, sent via NDI to the FOH which also allowed the placing of the video screen surface in Depence. Siyan provided a very detailed Depence file containing the Download Stage as well as the house rig. Mandylights then used this file to start pre-programming the Enter Shikari stage, which was transferred via MVR file support into Depence to program the whole rig, which just worked perfectly for them. Having the facility present at the actual FOH was a huge eyecatcher, too. Mandylights have invested heavily in both their UK and Australian offices, which sees exact replica state of the art Depence pre-viz studios on opposite sides of the world giving the company the ability to have 24 hour workflow.

Mandylights believe that with the right tools such as Depence, they now have the capability to save artists vast sums of money which otherwise would have been spent on lengthy production rehearsals. For the Enter Shikari performance Tom and Steve programmed the whole set inside the UK studio facility which meant they could also send renders of what they had done so far to the band. They knew that the production rehearsal space was not an exact copy of the Download festival stage, so the solution was to take the Depence system with them. In this way they could have the lighting, stage, house lighting rig, crowd etc. visualized on a large screen, so the band could have a look on the ongoing design process. The band members were simply blown away at how amazing the visualization looked, and on multiple occasions commented at how the technology and its capabilities has taken a massive leap forward. Mandylights comment: “It really was amazing to have them sat there with us and be able to say this is pretty much exactly how your show is going to look in the live environment.”

The import of NDI into Depence also was a massive help for this project and worked just perfectly. Mandylights were sending the video from a green hippo karst+ which allowed them to create a multitude of multi-faceted effects which a control by DMX alone cannot achieve.

Mandylights:

https://mandylights.com/

https://www.mandylightsu.com/

Having a whole new generation of shows in mind, the group around Louis Demacon and Feust Light decided to target virtual shows as the next big evolution in entertainment, the “event 3.0”. With the help of Syncronorm’s multimedia show design and visualization software system Depence, the team was able to realize a stunning integration of DJs, producers as well as artists in a true-to-life lunar setting.

Teamed up with the L’Assommoir production team for video broadcasting as well as Quartierlibre for event hosting, the shows were broadcasted back in April and additionally relayed to the YouTube channel of Lune Music to be rewatched. The goal of the stream was to achieve the record of 51 hours and 51 minutes in electronic live streaming, in reference to the French La Marne department.

The virtual festival was constructed in a realistic 3D representation of our Earth’s moon, which allowed a futuristic and artistic design approach. With the help of Depence, the team was able to implement a large and fully animated virtual crowd, outfitted with lighting bracelets which supported the mood of the actual show. The artists were integrated via NDI and the Depence chroma key feature, whereas cameras were programmed via DMX, giving the whole event a realistic touch. In addition to that, the FOH of a real festival was imitated, by having welcomed a lighting technician for each day of production. This was also represented in the virtual world as well - 21 hours of incredible live production were done in just 3 days.

Technical Overview:

Fixtures:

34 Robe BMFL Blade

40 Clay Paky DreamPanel Twin

50 Thomas FL1300

72 Elation Protron Eclipse

40 Robe Megapointe

8 Robe ColorStrobe 60°

24 Robe Ledbeam 150

6 Led Ring RGB DJ booth

Motion:

16 Moteur Asservies

FX:

23 X-Flamme F8

12 Tilt X-Flamme F8

21 Co2 Jet

Video:

500m² Mur Led

Some Numbers:

15 Day creation 3D/ design

10 Day settings/ programming

21h Operating/ 3 live night

10 Artists

1 Green screen 11x 3 m

330 Fixtures

23 Univers DMX

19 Screen

3 Midi Controler

60 Liter of beer

120m Truss box 400mm

Shows:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjzbtnL76z_HBh6entyT-sQ/videos

https://www.radioprimitive.fr/actualites/projet-51-51.html

Earlybird kicked off their year by supporting a fully virtual performance (read about it here

). Their next kick off, so to speak, was for the 2021 Super Bowl LV halftime show. The US based design support firm was brought onboard by lighting designer Al Gurdon, and were responsible for the programming and visualization of the widely televised broadcast production. Again, Earlybird relied on the performance and design capabilities of our multimedia show design and visualization system Depence, which led to a stunning halftime show, featuring the musical talents of ‘The Weeknd’: youtu.be/9rhadTURsrw

“Depence was necessary for this show due to the scope and scale of the project. There were many moving pieces, custom scenery, areas of high detail, and a visual fidelity that was required in order to present previz to other parties in the production. Depence let us work remotely, and informed important design changes and choices prior to arrival onsite.” – Earlybird, 2021

Earlybird was responsible for managing the coordination of control and circuiting of hundreds of scenic electrics. The set was fabricated by 3 separate vendors: TAIT Towers, Atomic Design and All Access, which created different parts of the stage scenery as well as custom built scenic elements. To bring their ideas to life, the teams have made extensive use of the Depence Asset builder, which was used to design over 50 custom fixtures such as LED neon tape, custom tungsten bulb arrays, light boxes, buildings, and more. All of these elements together helped to comprise a most professional and detailed working model, and subsequent pre-visualization of the final show.

“The ability to capture DMX, and export the programming before arriving onsite was a huge tool in helping the design team communicate their intentions visually. In addition to Depence’s ability to have a project of this size and still perform as well as it does, the most invaluable part of the program for this particular project was the Asset Builder.” – Earlybird, 2021

At first, the fixtures were prepared in Vectorworks, while models and texturing were prepared in Cinema4D. The easy-to-use import functions of Depence alongside the Asset Builder feature allowed the team to ultimately implement their files into the Depence 3D world. The lighting system as well as the RGB controllable stadium lighting system – which is already built in in house – were also added to the Depence project file. The previz programming was done at the Earlybird office in Burbank and onsite in Tampa using GrandMA2 consoles and 9 NPUs. With the help of Depence, preprogramming was comfortable, as changes could be made in real time according to decision making for the ongoing production phase. The team was able to test the impact and placement of additional fixtures even before dispatching changes to the onsite team, which was a huge help. The Depence project file was kept up to date throughout the preproduction phase as physical and patch changes came in through load in, and leading up to the first rehearsal.

Following the previz period in LA, presentation material in video form was rendered via Depence to send it to producers and the director to give them an idea of how the lighting programming would look at scale. This video then was incorporated into a larger creative previz video and was used to show the artist team the visual story of the show even before first rehearsals. Earlybird also imported the video content from screens producers Drew Findley and Dan Efros of DFP into the Depence model to play along on the timeline with the lighting programming. This was a huge help in understanding the relationship between lighting and video elements, which totaled 28 screens from 6 separate video sources (in Depence) in total.

Lighting Personnel

^{Designer: Al Gurdon}

^{Lighting Directors: Jeff Nellis, Ben Green}

^{Lighting Directors/Programmers: Eric Marchwinski, Mark Humphrey}

^{Gaffer: Alen Sisul}

^{Best Boys: John Cox, Dennis Sisul, Alejandro Flores}

^{Best Boys: John Cox, Dennis Sisul, Alejandro Flores Best Boys / Lead Followspots: Jason Uchita, Adam Hagin, Mikey Smallman, Daisy Toledo}

^{Chief Tech: Robb Minnotte}

^{PRG Lead Techs: Meg Flanagan, Chris Nye}

^{Previz Tech: Nick Coauette}

^{Stadium Lighting Tech: Michael Dodge}

^{The Weeknd Lighting Designer: Jason Baeri}

Lighting Equipment

^{4x grandMA2 Fullsize}

^{118x Robe Robin 1200 Wash}

^{1x grandMA2 Light}

^{50x GLP X4}

^{9x grandMA2 NPU}

^{18x Clay Paky Xytlos}

^{8x PRG Bad Boy GC LT}

^{112x Elation Proteus Maximus}

^{2x PRG Best Boy HP GC}

^{210x Martin RushPar2}

^{64x PRG Best Boy HP}

^{180x Martin Dotron}

^{22x PRG Bad Boy HP Framing}

^{200x Solaris Flare}

^{152x PRG Icon Edge}

^{704x ChromaBeams 900}

^{55x Chauvet Nexus AW 7x7}

^{420x Scenic RGB}

^{6x VL600 Beam}

^{369x Scenic Dimmers}

^{64x Robe Spikie}

We are happy to have had the opportunity to speak to Nick Coauette and Mark Humphrey from the Earlybird team, who have directly worked on the pre-visualization of the project. The two of them not only have an immense amount of experience in the Depence software, but always aim to push boundaries of what is possible in live and virtual production:

Which benefits does Depence² offer for virtual events?

Nick: Depence² offers a unique solution to virtual events because it is the only previz program right now that offers such high graphic fidelity. When rendered out at the highest quality, it is difficult to discern virtual from true reality. This project was an excellent example on how the line between what is real and what is not can very easily be blurred in a positive way.

What does Depence², as a multimedia show design software, mean for the future of our industry?

Mark: Depence², as a whole, brings a new look and feel to the pre-viz process on a show. It's not just a tool to program and see what the lighting is going to look like before getting onsite. Now with Depence², you can envision the entire show from top to bottom before even seeing it in person and really get a sense for what the show will be. There are so many features that Depence² has like the volumetric editor, animation importer, video content mapping, and more that open up so many possibilities for the software that make it much more than just a previz tool.

Which features benefit your personal workflow most?

Nick: Even though it is not directly supported by, the Asset builder is one of the most versatile and useful tools within Depence². Oftentimes we have to visualize fixtures that cannot be found within the library or that are completely custom and having the ability to create them within a program made to do so is game changing. Creating fixtures to use was typically a cumbersome or impossible process but now with the Asset builder it is made both easy and intuitive.

Mark: The DMX Stream tool as a whole is a revolutionary function. Being able to record DMX and render out that DMX data is such an invaluable tool to have. Where Depence² shines as a product is with the water texture and reflections with that texture. The water texture brought so much more realism into the show. One final feature that is innovative is the chroma key feature. Having this feature allows for so much more possibilities with the software itself.

Was there automation? What was automated?

Nick: There were 4 uses of automation: the center stairs that raised up and down bringing in the artist, both rings were able to move up and down and rotate in all directions, and the plane with the green screen footage on it was made to rotate and always be facing the camera when it moved.

How was the project programmed?

Mark: The project was produced by the team at Blink Inc. with creative direction by The Squared Division, and production design by Chase Hall. Programming was done from the Earlybird previz studios in Burbank, CA using a GrandMA2 Full-Size console with 4 NPUs to unlock the extra parameters we were using. I programmed from our studio while communicating with Andre Petrus, who lives in Nashville, over video conference while we were also streaming the Depence² real time render window to a server so Andre and the rest of the creative team could watch and give notes.

How was the project output/rendered and delivered?

Mark: After we finalized all lighting/automation programming, video content, and camera placement we then recorded all DMX data using the DMX Stream function, lined up audio and content with lighting, and we were ready to go. We rendered each camera out on 3 of our in house previz computers, each fitted with a Titan 2080Ti graphics card. We had 6 full length cameras that we rendered out and then 7 pickup shots mixed in throughout the performance. In the end we delivered the frame sequences to Blink, who completed the final edit, and delivered the full length product to the end client.

How many fixtures were in the show? What types?

Nick:

300 Mythos

550 JDC1

200 Flare

4 motors

What does the name Syncronorm mean to you?

Mark: The Syncronorm name, to me, means knowing that I am working in a stable piece of software that looks beautiful with great customer support behind it. The Syncronorm folks are open to new ideas that better the software and pushes it further than any previz software on the market now, as well as working with you to explain processes of how to achieve the show you are trying to build.

Nick: Syncronorm to me means innovation and a new future for previz. Never before have we seen the graphic fidelity that is displayed in Depence² in any other software and it truly opens up the door for many more possibilities in the previz process. Not only does the name Syncronorm mean a new future for previz, it also means community to me. The user-base for this program is so active and helpful and everyone is pushing the program to the limits to try and find new ways to achieve their goals. Syncronorm communicates and reaches out to their community often and makes me and other feel welcome and supported.
 

People involved in the project:

Creative Direction: The Squared Division
Producers: Blink
Production Design: Chase Hall
Lighting Direction: Andre Petrus
Lighting Programming: Mark Humphrey
Production Facilities in Medellín: 36Grados
Editing & Post Production: Blink
Visualization & Render Support: Earlybird

Drafting/Initial Depence modeling & build: Morgan Evans

The all-new Sensation ’Monument of Light’ is aimed to be a flag of hope and faith since the original plans for the show had to be canceled due to the ongoing virus situation. The show was realized without any kind of live crowd and created by the original Sensation team around creative director Sander Vermeulen of ID&T. The music was composed by Joshua Dutrieux & the show was created in a collaboration with T-Minus design, who were responsible for the lighting design and programming .It was broadcasted on the 4th of July (the original date for the event in Amsterdam) and can be re-watched here: www.sensation.com/monument-of-light

We at Syncronorm are very happy that we had the chance to contribute to this amazing project, as the show was pre-programmed & visualized with Depence². For this a 3D model of the arena itself was imported into Depence², after that 484 fixtures as well as the aesthetics shaping mannequins were placed virtually. The show in combination with the custom-made audio track was then programmed via ArtNET on a MA3 and NPU, all independent from location within the studio. The virtual camera of Depence² thereby allowed to simulate the drone shots, which were taken in the arena. In this way it was possible to take dramatic shots & to stage the mannequins in a perfect light.

“All was programmed in the studio. The set was built and recorded on one day, so accuracy was key. […] The visualisation gets really close to reality, what helps if there is limited load in time.” – Sander den Otter, T-Minus design

T-Minus design have used the Depence² Stage & Animate modules for the pre-programming process as well as the animation. Here, Depence² helped to create previews with perfectly synced audio.

For more information about T-Minus design, please visit: http://www.t-minusdesign.com/