FREMONT, CA – Blackmagic Design today announced that Grammy-nominated American rock band Fall Out Boy’s worldwide MANIA tour is using a complete Blackmagic Design live production workflow for IMAG and AV. Blackmagic Design’s Micro Studio Camera 4Ks and Teranex AV standards converters are being used for image capture and signal conversion on the tour, along with several other products, including an ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K live production switcher, MultiView 16 monitor, Smart Videohub 40×40 and Smart Videohub CleanSwitch 12×12 routers.
More details from Blackmagic (www.blackmagicdesign.com):
Since the release of their 2005 breakthrough album, From Under the Cork Tree, Fall Out Boy has been topping the charts with hit songs, such as “Sugar, We’re Goin Down,” “Dance, Dance” and “Centuries,” and they received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2006 Grammy Awards. The band’s upcoming album MANIA is set to be released on January 19, 2018, and the band embarked on the MANIA tour in October 2017 in support of the album, along with opening acts Jaden Smith and blackbear.
Production Designer Robb Jibson of Chicago production design firm So Midwest, Inc. designed the video setup which includes 10 Micro Studio Camera 4Ks on the stage and center walkway for point of view (POV) shots, along with three Blackmagic Studio Camera 4Ks throughout the upper sections of each venue to capture wider, more encompassing views of the stage. All the cameras are fed into two Mac Pros on the engineering racks backstage, which are then fed into a Teranex AV to convert the feeds to HD‑SDI.
“The Micro Studio Camera 4Ks are perfect because they are inconspicuous, we don’t need to put camera operators on them, and the images are absolutely amazing. We even have one on the drum kit,” said Robb. “The Studio Camera 4Ks are great because there’s a lot of dynamic range and the images match with the Micro Studio Camera 4Ks. Also the large viewfinder helps the camera operators see what they are shooting, and the one cable solution lets us run 1,500 ft. fiber with no hassle. Together the cameras capture a variety of shots and angles that create really dynamic content for the audience.”
“The Teranex AV is a nice box for reducing latency while scaling the outputs of the media server and converting the formats,” added Robb. “It’s really flexible and the low latency is huge in this type of concert setting because the audience expects the close ups on the screens to be in sync with what’s happening on stage.”
From the Teranex AV, the feeds head to a Smart Videohub CleanSwitch 12×12 with Videohub Smart Control and are routed to an ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K for a live cut of the show, along with an ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Panel for SuperSource and customizing the cut to play on the show’s LED wall. Also on the engineering racks are a Smart Videohub 40×40 to route video to the IMAG screens, a MultiView 16 to view all the camera angles backstage in real-time, a SmartView 4K to monitor the show as it’s happening, an ATEM Talkback Converter to support multiple camera talkback with the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K operators, and several HyperDeck Studio Pro broadcast decks to record the program cut of the show and play music videos and commercials on the IMAG screens before the show and in between acts.
The racks also hold two MultiDocks for recording the show onto SSDs, making it easy for Robb to edit directly from the disks as needed. Robb implemented an UltraStudio 4K as an input and output box to see pre-rendered content live in the media server prior to having to render its final comps. A second Teranex AV is also in use on the backup server.
Outside of acquisition and IMAG, several other Blackmagic Design products are being used on the tour including two SmartView HD monitors and several Mini Converters as part of the onstage video monitoring system. In addition, a Pocket Cinema Camera and Video Assist 4K monitor/recorder are mounted at the front of the house, which Robb personally uses to record the show in its entirety so he and the band members can review the show later.
Robb concluded, “Our end goal is always to put on a great show for fans, and the Blackmagic Design gear brings the show to the next level. These products allow us to bring a cinematic element to the show that we aren’t able to achieve with other products. It’s great that we can not only use such a high quality end-to-end workflow from one company, but also that we can own the gear. On top of that, we know that we can also use this same system in 4K if we decide we want to do that at any point.”
