Project Description

Icelandic Idol

Notch Designer Ingi Bekk immersed himself in Notch’s nodegraph to craft refreshingly experimental looks for Iceland’s latest season of Idol.

When Iceland’s Stöð 2 approached Video Designer Ingi Bekk about creating a show for this year’s Idol, Bekk saw it as the perfect opportunity to do what he’d been trying hard to do for years: quit After Effects entirely. Frustrated with having difficulty getting into a creative flow within the programme, Bekk initially turned to Notch as a way to produce rendered content but found a lot of freedom in its real-time workflow.

For this project specifically, Bekk turned to Notch to deliver material on an incredibly short turnaround. Songs for the show were confirmed on a Monday, and all the visual material had to be delivered on the Friday of the same week.

Bekk and team used two Absen LED screen configurations. One was an 8064-pixel by 1680-pixel canvas as a backdrop for each act, and the other was a roughly 13-metre floor screen consisting of a 3584-pixel by 512-pixel screen. He rendered out all looks in HapQ at full resolution run on Green Hippo Boreal servers supplied by Luxor.

The creative team juxtaposed warm flames with swirling, pink galaxies and, of course, cool, abstract strokes of blue in keeping with the classic Idol aesthetic. In Bekk’s own words, it was very easy and a lot of fun to comfortably iterate designs non-destructively. Through this process, he was able to set up a highly expressive system using modifiers keyed onto the timeline and smoothly create a show spectators loved.

“With Notch, there’s so much opportunity to explore and happen upon unexpected discoveries. I think it’s safe to say there’s no turning back now.”

Ingi Bekk, Video Designer

Additional press coverage:
Vísir, Photos.

Credits
Client: Stöð 2
Production Company: Stöð 2
Production Design: Luxor
Producer & Multicam Director: Bjorgvin Hardarson
Creative Director: Unnur Elisabet Gunnarsdottir
Video Designer: Ingi Bekk

Screen Control: Olafur Starri Palsson
Head of LED: Águst Ingi Stefansson
Lighting Designers: Alfred Sturla Bodvarsson, Axel Ingi Ólafsson, & Karl Sigurðsson
Production Manager: Vignir Orn Agustsson (Luxor)
Screen Producer: Ingi Bekk
Animator: Ingi Bekk
Photographer: Magnús Stefán Sigurðsson