

#FLUME FREE LUUDE SOFTWARE#
TIME’s annual Best Inventions list recognizes products, software and services that are solving compelling problems in creative ways.Three broadcast cameras equipped with additional hardware tracking allowed the production team to insert those 3D graphics into the video feed in real time. The result was the creation of enormous Australian birds (Flume is Australian), brightly colored flowers and leafy trees swaying in the wind, above the stage and teeming crowd. Key players in this process included the artist Jonathan Zawada, who has worked extensively on audio-visual projects with Flume, including on NFTs, and the director Michael Hili, who directed Flume’s extremely trippy recent music video, “Say Nothing.” This year, it took a partnership with Epic-which is focused on lowering the barriers to entry for 3D creators-and the buy-in of Flume-an electronic musician who has long emphasized visual craftsmanship at his concerts-to bring the project to fruition. However, previous efforts at AR experimentation at Coachella were stymied by the cost of production and the lack of interest from performers. “Because the at-home experience is never going to compare to the at-festival experience, we want to give artists new ways to express themselves and scaling viewership around the world.” “The online audience for shows is growing exponentially to the point where there’s maybe 10 or 20 times more people who are watching the show through a livestream than at the festival,” Schoonover says. Schoonover has been trying to utilize similar effects for Coachella’s livestream for years in an effort to broaden its audience beyond the confines of the Empire Polo Club. (The panther was also created with Unreal Engine.) Last September, a giant panther bounded across the Carolina Panthers’ stadium in a similar fashion.

Riot Games brought a giant dragon to the opening ceremonies of the League of Legends Worlds 2017 final a camera followed the shrieking beast as it flew around fans at the stadium. For the last couple years, AR visuals have been making their way into live broadcasts, although mostly as small gimmicks.
