Live Performance Loops – Premio Lo Nuestro

I did a some content for the show Premio Lo Nuestro this year. This is the second awards show I’ve done content for, also for the 2010 Latin Grammys. I designed the video content that goes on the screens behind the artists when they preform. It’s not just a giant TV behind them, but it’s little accent monitors and displays around the entire stage and venue. It’s definitely a different medium to showcase your work and requires different techniques than traditional motion design for television. In this case, the art is not the focus of the viewer, it’s supplemental to the live performance by the artist. It took me awhile to not think in terms of designing a music video, but something larger that lends itself to the style and artist of the the performance. And once I actually see the content on broadcast TV, it becomes apparent from various camera angles and perspectives that you rarely see your entire design, unless it’s a very wide camera shot. Therefore things can’t appear too big on the screen, and you also can’t focus too much on minute details because they become lost in a performance with singers, dancers, flashing lights, panning cameras, stage effects, etc.

I’m not sure how long these videos will last before the Univison lawyers go off on them, but I’ll try and keep them up as long as I can.

The first one I did was for Ricky Martin. It was not my favorite piece by far. I was given very little time to produce this because of various hold ups with his management. I spent only a couple days designing and executing a iece that was over 3 minutes long, while my other loops were tested and fleshed out over the course of a several weeks. It was too generic for my taste, basing it on a Trapcode Form style animation was not my idea or personal cup of tea.

The next artist I did content for was Tony Dize. The performance was supposed to have a Japanese theme in terms of art direction, so I styled my loops accordingly. I didn’t feel like the set and stage props really tied it together, and I felt like my loops were a little out of place. The opening was a Japanese style room with sliding paper doors revealing a peace bridge scene outside. I also made a koi pond with rippling water and some koi fish I was pretty proud of. I took a still photo and manipulated it to move using some bend effects in After Effects, so it appeared to swim as a real fish. I also made some falling cherry blossom petals and falling red maple leaves for separate scenes. I originally had them paint on over the duration of the loop, but the creatives above me didn’t feel like the effect translated well to the big screens, so I left it on the paper canvas and added the final paint texture to the entire duration of the loop.

I’d like to thank Nick Campbell, the Greyscale Gorilla for publishing a tutorial awhile back based on an effect he saw using reflective glass. It was pretty much exactly what my creative director described that he wanted here for Prince Royce, and I had previously viewed the tutorial so I knew what to do. I added a twist to part of it by launching the reflective glass pieces into the air and having them fall back down with gravity out of the bottom of the frame.

The last artist I did was for Fuego, and it was the act thgat closed the show so that was kind of cool. Obviously being named Fuego, we tied in a fire theme. I presonally love working with fire footage, and I used this 3K FIre Footage from Rampant Media Design Tools for some of my content. I made some nightclub lasers, a full concert stage, dancing girls among fire, as well as various generic fire loops to tie in to his 2 song medley.

All in all it’s a cool gig to design for, it definitely breaks up the monotony that can come from designing the same things for TV all the time.