In January 2021, a groundbreaking and extraordinary party was born – “2021 iQIYI scream for love”; the first super live party in the world which left the scheduling and combination of programs to the audience.
In this nearly 6-hour live show; different from the conventional live show, a total of 8 guide stations, 110 seats and 12 directors were used for multi-level switching. Four channels of live signals were pushed to the main stage, waiting area, backstage and theater area, respectively. All the live streams were displayed at the same time allowing the audience to choose which part to watch. At the same time, the audience was able to interact directly by voting for the artists they support. The higher the ranking, the earlier they would be on the stage to perform, or be able to assign the artists to perform in a limited combination.
Chen Wei, senior vice president of iQIYI, is the chief producer of the party. The “Super Night” studio of Zhejiang satellite TV program center, together with many top teams in China, worked hard to build the party. The implementation of visual creative design of the program was led by DNT design team, with the joint participation of N WAVE, TOWIN, WOWIDEA, VISUAL WORLD and other visual teams. The real-time visual design and presentation of the party scene is in the charge of N WAVE team.
There were six Hippotizer Boreal+ Media Servers acting as the video broadcast controller, working together and programming with GrandMA2. The systems were divided into two main Media Servers and two back-up, whilst the other two were responsible for the live 3D preview of all programs.
For the Media Server, the interactivity of the live show was the most challenging part. The performances did not have the same fixed process and program list as with a traditional party, as the show order and performance were decided by the voting audience. It only took a few minutes from the confirmation of a performance to the broadcast for the real-time visual designer to operate. The process advantages of NWAVE team and Hippotizer perfectly overcame this challenge. In a short period of time, they were able to call the edited program content through fast switching, and at the same time, they could preview the 3D stage before the screen was officially displayed.
“Because of the randomness of the Scream party, and the sky screen being as high as 7000px, the flexibility of using Hippotizer helped a lot in the process. In the production process, we used multi-layer materials for music editing and screen superimposing, and the stability and fluency of the Hippotizer also contributed to the smooth progress of the party. ” “The visual effects and the lighting colors needed to be coordinated and being able to adjust the attributes inside Hippotizer helped us achieve this effect conveniently.” Van, NWAVE real time visual designer
“Green Hippo is especially suitable for this kind of real-time scene programming. For each layer, you could change RGB, color temperature and other variables, or render the original material in real time through the special effects engine. Unlike the traditional concept of video server, which can only simply playback, the content modification with Hippotizer is more convenient, which greatly improves the work efficiency of the scene.”
Jeff Yang, Technical director of Honest-AV
“2021 iqiyi scream for love” creatively redefines the concept of an interactive live show. This performance has attracted a lot of attention, and the feedback from the market has confirmed that Zhejiang satellite TV and iqiyi have been very successful, bringing new ideas and program forms to the industry. I believe that more interactive programs will continue to appear in the future. Let’s look forward to more excellent programs in 2021!
Credit – Feagus Zheng, Honest AV.
Photo Credit – © Honest AV.
