When Elton John was getting ready to announce his 300-city, 3-year farewell tour, he wanted the launch event to match his expected level of showmanship.
As a huge fan of what’s next in technology, Elton decided a fully immersive 360º Stereo VR journey through his amazing career would be on par for this farewell announcement presentation.
The event coincided with the Grammys scheduled for that weekend, and the tour announcement was simulcast live to viewings in London and Los Angeles, and broadcast live on YouTube so VR and Elton John fans worldwide could join.
Hosted by Anderson Cooper at Gotham Hall in NYC, the assembled press was on hand, unsure of what the announcement was going to be. They were only instructed to show up to Gotham Hall, cordially invited by Elton John. Upon arrival, all assembled received their Samsung Gear VR headsets, received instructions on how to use them, and then we launched into this piece…
(If you don’t have proper VR equipment, please inquire with your nearest video game enthusiast, or please reach out to us and hopefully we can arrange for a screening with our equipment!)
16×9 Version (Non-VR)
VR Version (VR Goggles Need)
Flip Infinity was contracted to produce the VFX and Post Production portion of the entire project. This process starts with assisting the VFX Supervisor on-set, working with the 3D Tracking and Match Moving capture team, making sure all the assets captured translate to the wondrous world we were about to create. Beyond the digital environments we’d be developing, we were tasked with digital face replacement of a young Elton John replacing the real-world tribute Elton John performer’s face, so the viewer felt like they were present with Elton for these historic moments.
Digital Face Transformation
To recreate iconic moments in Elton’s career (his first US performance at the world-famous Troubadour and his legendary mega-concert at Dodgers Stadium), we would be required to shoot the performers on greenscreen and then digitally create the environment (and crowds) where they rocked.
Live Shoot
After the shoot was wrapped, the heavy lifting began. A custom nine-camera rig was built to push the boundaries of VR intimacy. Typically, VR shoots tend to shoot subjects from 10-20 feet away to not introduce a huge amount of technical challenges exceeding the limitations of the technology. This being Elton John, it was decided in storyboarding that we would be getting within 3 feet of our subject, limitations be damned!
Throughout the project, we reminded ourselves that Elton always pushed the limits, and if we were to deliver to his level of showmanship, we needed to push our limits too. And push we did.
After visiting these two landmark moments in Elton’s career, it was time to journey with him to the peaks of his superstardom and excess. The stars aligned (sorry) and we were able to capture the visuals of Elton’s showmanship with some of his most iconic looks. Like Elton, eventually the journey into outer space requires you to come back down to earth. We took this opportunity to showcase Elton’s humanitarian and other recent work to complete our journey.
The VFX production pipeline included stitching, tracking, keying, rotoscoping, CG and face modeling, 3d environments, heavy design, face replacement, compositing, and massive amounts of GPU rendering (Redshift). The coordination of all these disciplines with a calendar and client reviews to deliver for the event is a highly detailed operation.
Assets were being created in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Sydney, Tel Aviv, London, and India at all hours of the day and night. We were the key contact for the entire VFX and Post pipeline, receiving and distributing the necessary assets, while managing the local and cloud render farm time, needing to confirm what we were creatively seeking to deliver was even possible.
After all of the assets were rendered, we tasked ourselves with building the final edit and deliverable. What amounted to around 90 VFX shots covering about 10,000 frames, all delivered in stereo VR, all in various stages of quality and approval eventually funneled into our final edit. A simultaneous audio mix (ambisonic) with every visual element receiving custom sound design ended up delivering in the 11th hour, ended with a final piece that earned a Bronze Lion at Cannes and blew away all who have viewed it, including Elton John himself.
Now that the final piece was complete, the new challenge of deploying for a live event arrived. Coordinating hundreds of VR headsets locally wired to one sync in NYC, and beaming that same signal out to London, LA, and YouTube presents challenges in bit rate, file size, and specs. We walked the fine line between maintaining the pristine level of visual crispness that makes the whole presentation so mind-blowing while realizing that devices, bandwidths, and platforms exist within their own individual limits. Knowing that (literally) hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are dialing in to your signal at that same moment while Elton John himself is backstage ready to come out once the VR spectacle concludes (don’t mess up) put our steely nerves right in place, and Flip Infinity was serving as Post Producer for the Behind the Scenes of this live event that needed to go out on the London nightly news (4 hours after the event). Lots of fun!
The resulting success of this execution validated so many questions we had at the beginning of what was possible in visuals, in ambisonic audio, stereo 360º VR, and live event execution, and now has Flip Infinity chomping at the bit for the next opportunity!
