The concept is the same for most countries, starting with ‘Blind Auditions’ during which the judges choose their set of contestants. Moving on to the ‘Battle Phase’, where the judges pitch two of their own acts against each other and then into the third ‘Performance Phase’, when the television audience gets the opportunity to vote for one contestant per team to be saved. The last remaining four singers then move into the final at the end of which one will be crowned ‘The Voice’, winning a prize and recording contract.
On 30th December 2011 the first season of the show’s finish version premiered on TV-channel Nelonen and saw artist Mikko Sipola take home the win in the final on 20th April 2012. The ‘Voice of Finland’ was produced by dutch-based Talpa Media Group and Green Hippo’s close partners, Red Green Blue RGB Oy in Finland, were responsible for the Hippotizer media server design and set-up.
Designer Jussi Kallioinen created a stunning stage concept and decided to go with two Hippotizer GrassHopper units to run the show, the most recent addition to Green Hippo’s product range and a powerful compact rackmount unit offering features very similar to the Hippotizer HD including a full HD output and the a range of input options.
The two GrassHoppers were networked on the systems integrated HippoNet and controlled via an external ZooKeeper controller. The stage floor contained integrated LED fixtures running all the way upstage, and the set-up also featured two horizontal LED screens upstage.
All screens and fixtures were VideoMapped and Johan West from RGB explains:
The set-up was VideoMapped into eight different areas on one big canvas. There were LED screens integrated into the stage floor and upstage in two different lines. Both LED screens upstage had several different horizontal positions, so the VideoMap positions for each part of the LED screen was cued from the lighting console in use.
Johan West
Additionally both GrassHoppers had dual HD-SDI cards installed and each then had the LiveFeed from the OB truck fed into the server. Using an MA2 lighting desk content creator and Hippotizer operator Mikko Linnavuori programmed the GrassHopper servers provided by RGB Oy Finland. Red Green Blue RGB Oy, Green Hippo’s exclusive distributor in Finland, is a video production company with offices in Helsinki and Tampere.