Half a month before the official performance, Nina Wan announced his first concert on Twitter, the “Meet Yourself” super online concert. After the concert was broadcast online on July 26, it received a lot of praise and recommendations, and the topic received 120 million readings, which caused heated discussions.
The online concert was produced on-site by Damai and landed on Youku tube. The overall director, planning, production, and stage design are in charge of the S.A.G Stage Art Working Group. Show Plus is responsible for the stage design and provide technical support. The shooting team is in charge of Ji Shuzhai. In addition, the concert invited two international design teams to join. The French new media visual artist Roman Tadi is responsible for the production of VJ materials, and the exclusive stage effects are designed for Naiwan; in terms of styling design, Billie Eilish queen stylist Lisa Katnick serves as the styling director to customize the exclusive look for Nina Wan .
The blessings of the excellent behind-the-scenes team made this performance full of spectacle. We interviewed chief director S.A.G CEO Yang Tsi, and walked behind the scenes of this super online concert.
Theme concept- Meet myself
“The theme of the concert “Meet Yourself” is an extension of Nina’s personality. Because Nina is a rap singer, she has many distinctive songs, and she has her own youthful and lively charm to stand out in the show “Youth with You 2”. So we want to create a feeling of “two-sidedness is ten thousand”, let her use very cool dress to express some “dark” and “cyberpunk” feelings, and express some lighter music with a youthful and beautiful feeling, while showing she has different characters that are feminine, tough and handsome. “Director Yang Tsi explained.
In addition, Yunoman completed the monologue concert lead video, expressing his attitude of mastering his life through puppets: “I learn to manipulate puppets and learn to make puppets, but I never do “puppets”.” This also returns to the theme of this concert, meeting myself.
Live + recording combined
The concert adopts the production mode of live broadcast + recording, allowing the audience to enjoy the audio-visual feast while also having interesting and innovative interactions with idols through the Internet!
Yang TSi said that as an artist and the main creative team, of course, I hope that the quality of the performance is guaranteed. This is the reason why we use the recording + post-production method for the music performance. In the form of live broadcast, the audience is more concerned about “interaction”, which can connect through the screen, and communication is one of the core of live broadcast. Therefore, we recorded the performance content to ensure the quality of the music performance. Then, in a place similar to a movie theater, Yunoman and her friends watched the recorded performance with online audiences, and interacted with the audience. Part is live broadcast. Even after Naoman recorded the performance, she never watched the recording. It was also very special for her to watch the video of her performance on the spot for the first time.
In this combination of live broadcast + recording, Damai and Youku tube also designed audience options during the live broadcast. The audience can click on the music performance screen or click “Nina to watch their performance in real time”. This is also a new viewing experience.
In order to balance the effects of recording and live broadcast, the production team is also well-advised in the design of camera positions, images, and sound.
Yang Tsi said that recording and broadcasting can make the lens language more meticulous. For example, when we are recording, we first bring the camera to rehearse, and then watch the playback immediately with the shooting team, adjust the camera connection, and design the shooting more carefully in terms of the music rhythm and the switching of the shots in the music paragraph, so that the picture is Music rhythm is more related. In terms of sound, live sound reception is still the same process, but we don’t need to do live mixing in real time, we can record sub-tracks and mix in the recording studio, so that the sound polishing is more refined. But our team does not want to be too extreme, do not want to make the details like shooting MV, after all, performance is different from MV. Therefore, the overall presentation of the recording and broadcasting of this music performance is “more detailed than real-time performance but not too much.” This way the audience can still feel the continuity of the performance when watching
Song’s stage design creativity
The whole concert uses film-like narrative techniques, story-telling series of 10 original songs by Nina breaking the traditional stage restraint, incorporating installation art, and presenting performance effects in multiple scenes
The scene is mainly divided into the stage area, the matrix stage light area and the steel frame area. Different areas have different roles in different songs.
The first two songs, “done” and “1/9” are cool styles. The director team hopes to make this cool even higher, and make the performance look full of dark and cyberpunk through the use of actors, led matrix moving head lights, iron frames and other dance methods.
In the first song “done”, a magical scene and a resurrection plot, Nina is lying on a bed surrounded by actors with strange shapes and masks, creating a mysterious atmosphere. Surrounded by led matrix moving head lights with changing colors, the photoelectricity is mobilized to gather in a small area to build a unique scene, giving the audience the ultimate audio-visual experience. Utilizing the intensity and weak angle of the lighting to create a mysterious and magical alternative space.
“1/9” is performed by Nina in a wash light-stained iron frame. Nina sang and walked through the steel frame area, and even added a “crawling on the ground” scene to increase the mysterious dark effect.
It wasn’t until the third song that the audience thoroughly saw all the venues for the performance. “One Stroke” is an antique cool song full of Chinese elements. We use “silk punk” as the concept, and the red curtain as the “court curtain”. A Chinese palace lantern, a wooden grille with Chinese elements, adapted to the Chinese style of the song. Because Nina is a native of Xi’an, the visual materials produced by the international artist French Roman, especially the terracotta warriors and drum towers in Xi’an, are also unique in the costume design. Modern integration with cyberpunk.
Nina changed into a more beautiful costume and sang several fresh songs in a row. The adapted version of “I don’t wanna see u anymore” also uses grand pianos and candlesticks to create atmosphere.
The last song “but u” joined the live band, Nina also personally arranged the microphone stand, decorated with lace, butterflies and other elements, the last shot Nina lying in the flowers, the creative idea of this “flower” is also Nina herself Designed, beautiful and romantic. The production team is completely using the skills of filming to schedule the camera positions, allowing the audience to follow the lens and immerse themselves in the beautiful pictures and Nina’s singing.
“On the whole, the props, stage lighting, and stage art used in this performance are actually not the latest and most expensive equipment. We still pursue the use of common materials to form an exquisite performance content, and add more to the performance. The soft “creative”, in “dear X” is Wanbian singing while “removing makeup”. The props only use a film and television lamp, but this song uses minimalism.” Yang Tsii said about the design of each song.
Live online and offline performances- The core is “people”
Speaking of the highlights of this concert, director Yang Tsi said frankly that the biggest highlight is Nina herself. We knew her before she became a “popular” on the TV show. I think her stage performance and singing skills are very good! Like a dancer’s dance, she just watched it on the day of the recording, and then she could join directly. Her confident eyes when facing the camera and her interaction with the camera are improvised, which shows her performance skills and professionalism. I feel that in this era when new and upgraded technology changes the performance of stage art equipment, the expressiveness of artists will always be the core. After all, we still serve “people” in stage art production.
S.A.G has successfully planned a number of online live broadcast events this year. Director Yang Zi believes that the more and more interesting the online live broadcast! First of all, at the operational level, it has broken away from the shackles of traditional performance venues and stages, and the scene planning during performances can be innovated in various ways. There is also a lot of freedom for artists’ performances.
In a larger concept, live broadcast is different from offline. We consider the audience’s experience more. We will pay more attention to creativity and continuity, as well as the continuous creation of “new ideas”, and eliminate the “channel switching” and the prone to mobile phones + earphones. “fatigue”. After all, in any case, live broadcast cannot solve the offline atmosphere and the “tension” of live sound pressure.
As far as the industry is concerned, in difficult times, as a last resort, the entire industry needs to develop and explore innovation. Live broadcasting has solved real problems and made everyone re-examine the integration of music performance and the Internet. And looking forward to the future when everything is normal, offline and online are equally important and parallel, so that the music performance industry will develop better.
