Hippotizer Powers FX For Finnish Rockers Apulanta

The rock band sound of Finnish favourites Apulanta met the sweeping strings of the Sinfonia Lahti for a series of special concerts recently, with a stage-wide, wraparound LED backdrop powered by tvONE's Green Hippo brand of Hippotizer Media Servers.

Taking place at the city of Tampere's 15,000-capacity Nokia Arena, the two-night extravaganza drew fans of Apulanta – one of Finland's most popular bands – to experience the fusion of rock and symphony. New-kid-on-the-block Avantrum Visuals designed and delivered the visual elements of the show, including stage, lighting, video design and live camera feed storyboarding, and lighting programming and operation.

"At the very early stages, when designing the looks for each song, we were already imagining how we could utilise Hippotizer's possibilities to deliver something special for the screens," said Avantrum Visuals’ Set and Lighting Designer, Harri Kauppinen. "We had formed a vision about what camera angles we wanted, so the planning of camera placement was important and at the same time we were able to already think how we could manipulate it all with Hippotizer.

"Our idea was to use live feed as a seamless part of the created video content and in some places to deliver the content using only live feed. Masking, moving and multiplying the live images with Hippotizer was an essential part of this. Hippotizer also gave us the possibility to deliver well planned compositions with live image to the screens. With Hippotizer, we were able to easily use live feed from multiple cameras at the same time, mask and move them on top of each other and add effects using Hippotizer's own effects and boosting things up with Notch."

Kauppinen and his team specified two Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers to deliver the visual punch – one live and one backup. The Boreal+ MK2s were controlled via DMX using a grandMA 2 lighting console, and the concert was mainly timecoded, with cues triggered by the desk. The Hippotizers were supplied by Creative Technology Finland, with Creative Technology as the overall technical supplier.

"Hippotizer offers us versatility both during the design phase and on-site at the arena," Kauppinen continued. "The Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers provided enough inputs and outputs to run the whole show from one powerful machine. For seven mixes, including a total of 36 layers, the Boreal+ MK2 gave us power to complete this project with ease."

On stage, 594 Roe Magic Cube MC-9H LED tiles made up 213.84 square metres of display, curving in a horseshoe arrangement behind the performers and expanding out into IMAG screens, as one giant screen. The team also had control of the Nokia Arena's 'ribbon screens' that circle the arena on two levels. The screen visuals consisted of created video and graphic material created by Inka Penttilä with the help of Vesa Pasanen, and live feed from a range of Bradley robot, and Canon cameras.

"We used a range of Hippotizer features to manipulate and realise the visuals, including masking, multiplying, moving and animation, mirroring and adding effects to the live feed, and keeping different camera images / inputs on different layers at the same time to create the wanted visuals," explained Penttilä. "I love designing a whole look that consists of multiple layers and pieces and combining them with the live feed - it's so easy to create interesting effects with Hippotizer’s mix modes."

Lassi Seppä oversaw video programming and operation: "We used ZooKeeper to visualize all parameter values for the layers. For the songs without timecode, Hippotizer gave us powerful live cueing options when keeping up with very up-tempo music. The virtually instant reaction of Hippotizer on live cues was mandatory. We also used Hippotizer's VideoMapper feature a lot – most of the live input positioning was done this way, which proved to be a very powerful tool in this project. This method allowed for multiple live images on full canvas resolution within one layer."

"One of the most powerful manipulation features for live inputs were brightness and contrast levels. As operator, I was constantly monitoring these levels in real-time to get them in perfect balance for the other effects and manipulation. It was also very beneficial to have the created video content in layers instead of rendering it all together. This gave the chance to control things in more detail and delivered the option to easily change and find new looks with Hippotizer."

Also on the visuals team were multi-camera director Mikko Kurri, and assistant multi-camera director Emma Viljanen.

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