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For J Balvin’s grand entry on Saturday night during his concert appearance on the Fortnite video game, the Latin pop star walked through a giant glowing pumpkin, just as he might emerge from the bowels of Madison Square Garden on an elevator to meet thousands of screaming fans.
Appearing as a Frankenstein monster with green hair and yellow outfits, Balvin strutted and strutted on the pumpkin throughout his opening number – “Reggaeton,” a tribute to his musical roots – as beams of light shone against a sepulchral complex. It was pure Vegas staging.
But when he recorded his appearance in California a week earlier, there was no pumpkin, no riser, and no crowds. Just Balvin, surrounded by LED panels on a dark soundstage that, with some animating magic, allowed the virtual lantern – with a cast of skeletons and goblins – to be digitally added to the performance, a blur of reality and fantasy well suited to the game.
Balvin’s Halloween-themed appearance was the last high profile music event on Fortnite, the hugely popular video game that took on new significance for the entertainment industry during the pandemic.
With the concerts closing, musicians have flocked to virtual platforms to reach their fans. A well-timed Fortnite show in April from rapper Travis Scott – complete with stunning graphics that put Scott in the digital gaming realm – has become a surprise cultural event, drawing nearly 28 million gamers and providing proof of concept for artists who are had suddenly found themselves at home.
Balvin’s 13-song, 38-minute Halloween set was a mash of light monsters in Day-Glo colors that sounded like a futuristic translation of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” with dancers dressed as ghosts, zombie cyclops and animals. happy. All the while, full moons, gravestones and cobwebs swirled vividly around them.
The process of creating the show, observed over three of the four days of rehearsing and recording the event, was a cross between old-school Hollywood and cutting-edge virtual reality.
In a nondescript industrial building in Glendale, Calif., Dancers lounged backstage awaiting their lines and members of a production crew of a few dozen people watched from a control room. When not vibrating with Balvin’s beats, the soundstage was silent except for the roar of an air purifier.
But when recording began, bright lights danced across the LED screens of the diamond-shaped stage and two walls behind, while the monitors displayed those same enhanced scenes with 3D animation. The concert was created in “XR”, or extended reality, a mixture of real and virtual worlds that allowed the live performances of Balvin and his dancers to be augmented with animated effects.
In another scene, Balvin performed “Que Pretendes” standing on a giant golden skeleton palm, another studio illusion. But he was soon joined by Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny, who was not present for the recording of Balvin but had filmed his appearance in front of a green screen – a glimpse of humanity that was, in fact, another specter. (The Black Eyed Peas were another virtual guest, for the song “Ritmo”.)
Balvin, a 35-year-old Colombian star, marries soft, mellow vocals with rocking beats, and he has come to embody a new kind of global pop, attracting large audiences while remaining true to his native Spanish.
He’s collaborated with Beyoncé and Cardi B, and Balvin’s Coachella set last year gave a taste of the aesthetic he would bring to Fortnite: dancers in bulbous costumes surrounded by him as giant screens showed bright and smiling anime clouds. (His latest album, released in March, is called “Colores.”) The creative team behind Balvin for Coachella and Fortnite, Antony Ginandjar and Ashley Evans of The Squared Division, also choreographed the Britney Spears show in Las Vegas, “Piece of Me”.
Besides Scott, other Fortnite concerts have featured Marshmello, the DJ who wears a comic book headgear; producer Diplo; rapper and singer Dominic Fike; and BTS K-pop sensations. In a phone interview ahead of his second day of rehearsal, Balvin said he had high ambitions for the set, his first virtual performance of the pandemic.
“I really wanted to be the first Latino to make that statement,” Balvin said. “Raising the culture, upping the reggaeton movement, and upping my brand as J Balvin, with such amazing technology.”
Fortnite concerts take place in the gaming realm, with player avatars visible onscreen as they watch the show unfold in front of them, like viewers in a movie driving. This superposition of realities can be both disorienting and exhilarating. As I watched Balvin’s performance, I kept an eye on my own dancing avatar and at times followed other characters who roamed my field of vision. False crowd noises were broadcast throughout the show.
Balvin, who described his own Fortnite gambling habits as voyeuristic – “I just look around, check the mood” – said he prepared for his performance by imagining himself in the world of Fortnite.
“You approach human beings, of course, but they are in a playful position; they have their controller in their hands, ”he says. “For a lot of people, this will be their first reggaeton gig, and it’s going to be through Fortnite, so I have to give it my all.”
Throughout the pandemic, musicians – and tech companies – scrambled to find the best platforms to stream concerts as the live music industry came to a halt, abruptly cutting off the source of revenue. most important of many artists.
Instagram, YouTube, and gaming site Twitch were packed with performances, and many companies attempted to charge money for virtual tickets and recreate certain elements of attending in-person shows, like preferred seats and artists’ meetings. While many livestreams barely started above the DIY level of production quality, innovations emerged: Erykah Badu’s show series featured a performance seemingly inside giant bubbles; a summer festival was held in Minecraft, another game with a gigantic audience.
Fortnite has become an unusual but promising outlet. It has 350 million users, according to Epic Games, the publisher behind the title, who remain deeply engaged while playing. The company has devoted substantial resources to concerts, trying to make each of them a special event.
“Fortnite has become more than a game,” said Nate Nanzer, the company’s head of global partnerships.
Epic says it allows music and pays artists fees for their appearances.
Balvin’s show, like all performances in the game, took place at Party Royale, a combat-free zone in the virtual world of Fortnite. After getting there, players briefly walk through what looks like the grounds of a music festival – passing open fields, a fast food restaurant, and plenty of signs – and eventually make their way to the stage.
Since the event with Scott, in which a 3D version of the rapper was incorporated into the game, musical appearances on Fortnite (by BTS, Diplo and others) have been recorded in real life and displayed in-game, as through a window. between worlds, sparking complaints from fans that the viewing experience just wasn’t as appealing. Production time and resources are a part of that, as Epic has tried to run shows more frequently.
“What we’re looking to do is create something a little more scalable and repeatable,” Nanzer said.
In some ways, Glendale’s scene looked like any movie production during the pandemic. Everyone on the set underwent a rapid test for Covid-19. When Balvin arrived for the first day of rehearsal, he was wearing a Lakers hat, denim jacket, and like everyone else, a mask. (Over the summer, Balvin caught a case of Covid-19 and said he was almost hospitalized. “It’s not a game,” he said of the virus.)
But the set had far more advanced technology than any standard music video shoot. As Balvin and his dancers performed, images moved around them on the stage and walls, sometimes offering the naked eye only a partial glimpse of the ultimate shot. Animators in the control room, and working in postproduction, filled the 3D set and the Halloween creatures.
On the soundstage, three infrared cameras performed their own choreography around Balvin. They work by triangulating their positions against hundreds of small markers on the walls and ceiling. Whenever director Shelby Cude changed a shot, the floors and walls would automatically realign their display to the cameras’ new perspective.
“Every time the camera changes it’s like, where am I?” said Rudy Garcia, a replacement for Balvin during rehearsals.
Balvin finally got it. Practicing how he would appear on top of the pumpkin, he stood several feet from the edge of the stage but pretended to wobble, and almost topple over, on what would be the edge of the glowing gourd.
“I love this!” Balvin said afterwards. “It’s crazy. I feel like I’m in the game. Like I’m in Fortnite.”
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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