The BRIT Awards: Dave

TAWBOX, Stout and Bluman Associates combine Notch and MoSys camera tracking to create a 3D projection-mapped show for live broadcast.

UK grime artist Dave gives an emotionally and visually impactful live performance at the BRIT Awards 2020. TAWBOX commissioned Bluman Associates & Stout Studio to bring Dave’s lyrics to life. The team faced the challenge of integrating a complicated technical workflow into a large long-running live show and live TV broadcast.

Headed up by Lewis Kyle White, Stout Studio combined Notch and C4D to create carefully crafted 3D animations and live-action compositions. The visuals, inspired by black history, were rendered in Notch as a dynamic 3D projection appearing in real-time on the performers piano. The team produced a compelling perspective based projection effect using a hybrid virtual production workflow. The Mo-Sys StarTracker camera tracking system generated positional data from the broadcast camera directly into disguise media servers which relayed the information into Notch. This direct feed enabled Notch’s virtual camera to adapt to real-life camera moves in an instance. The live audience at home and in the studio were able to experience Dave’s lyrics in three-dimensions on screen. The combination of Dave’s powerful performance and the flawless delivery of contextual visuals produced a goose-bump inducing live-performance.

“Producing a compelling perspective based projection effect requires a great deal of planning. Integrating MoSys, disguise and Notch with a projection system had never been done before – and we were integrating this into both a live show and TV broadcast. If you stop and think about what’s going on behind the scenes, it’s quite a big ask. Thankfully, the many challenges we faced during production were easy to overcome with Notch’s adaptable workflow. Everything went to plan, and we could not have asked for a better team to pull it off. The reaction to the performance has been incredible, and hands down Dave’s performance was the extra magic that brought everyone’s hard work together and elevated it to a special place.”

Pod Bluman, director, Bluman Associates

Additional press coverage:
Billboard, TPI, Bilibili, The Guardian, Mo-Sys

Credits
Creative Directors/Conceptualists: TAWBOX
Piano Design: TAWBOX
PM: Joel Stanley
TM: Trevor Williams
2nd Pianist: Fraser T Smith
3D Creation/Design: Stout Studio
Technical Production – Bluman Associates
Technical Production Manager: Pod Bluman
Technical Production Manager: Simon Hudson
Notch Creative & Direction: Lewis Kyle White
Disguise XR rehearsals programming: Christian Dickens
Notch & Disguise Assistant: Kyle Reseigh

Disguise Show Operator: Vincent Steenhoek
2D animation: Catherine Woodhouse
3D animation: Jan Urbanowski & Lewis Kyle White
2D Content Creation/Design – SHOP / TAWBOX
Steadicam : John Clarke
Camera tracking : MO-SYS
Media Servers: disguise gx2c
Additional thanks to: Disguise XR: Ash Nehru, Peter Kirkup, Jamie Sunter
Mo-sys team : Ben Tilbrook, Martin Parsley, Oleksandr Skrypnyk, Asi San