Darmah puts ROE Visual products to the test for The Billboard Latin Music Awards

Chatsworth, US (1 December 2020) – The Billboard Latin Music Awards 2020 generated 45.9 million engagements across Telemundo-owned platforms, plus 38 million engagements across other platforms, ranking it as the number one Spanish-language special in primetime since the pandemic struck. The producers have no doubt to the reason for the success: they were able to create a mostly live show that included a live audience – ROE Visual products were a big part of it all.

Latin music industry’s longest running award show was postponed to October 21, taking place at the BB&T Center in Fort Lauderdale. “We had to redesign the previous set with considerations of COVID protection,” explains Rodrigo Proal, darmah founder.

The new proposal was a 360-octagon shaped seven-stage set. Two of the stages were for the award presenters and the winners; one was for the show host; and four stages were for the live performances. But even those four stages were divided: Two were used for acts with dancers, and two were used with acts with musicians. “The four performance stages were color-coded, and each had its own small crew,” Proal adds.

“The desire for as much of a live show as possible required a design that allowed for all the pandemic safety protections and protocols necessary, and yet have all the excitement of live award show with a real audience,” says Proal. “We had to maximize the entertainment value but minimize everything else, from the number of crew to how the acts performed.” This year’s set design allowed sets to be UV sanitized between acts and facilitated social distancing. 

darmah’s creative team sat down with Black and came up with a proposal for each act based on the song they were doing with the Artist’s input. Despite the segregated stages, they were able to pull off the highlights of these type of award shows: duets. Ozuna performed “with” the Black Eyed Peas, but while they were on separate stages, the camera work and video design gave the in-house and at-home audience the look and feel of a true spontaneous collaboration. Pablo Alboran, Luis Fonsi, Jesús Navarro, and Joy sang a medley of Mexican singer-songwriter Armando Manzanero classic songs that allowed them to interact as if they were all on the same stage. It was an exciting and moving tribute for Manzanero’s induction into the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame.

Particularly eye-popping was that Daddy Yankee and Ozuna started their performance in an immersive virtual world created in darmah’s dXR stage, which features the latest Extended Reality technology (XR). The segment began there, but then seamlessly transitioned to performing the song live on the main stage at the BB&T Center. “The producers wanted to bring our technology to the show in a different way, and we were all pleased with the results,” says Moncada. She adds that it was accomplished by great team effort from lighting, video, cameras, choreography, and wardrobe.

Miami based production company darmah, was also tasked to provide all of the advanced cutting-edge video gear for the set. As is their preference, their brand of choice for all the LED screens is ROE Visual. The set for the Latin Music Awards included a broad array of ROE Visual LED products, like the BO2, BM4, CB8, CB4, Vanish V8S, and ROE Strips products.

“It’s not the first time darmah has chosen to use the ROE Visual products for the Latin Music Awards, a fact that we’re hugely proud off. To see such a wide array of our products at work in the absolutely stunning stage design is very rewarding. Our products hold up, both live as well as on-camera, that was important for the producers of this show. The Black Marble floor is especially suited to create stages for virtual production, not only is the pixel pitch and matte finish ideal, they also offer safety for the performers, due to the anti-skidding surface”, comments Frank Montero, General Manager for ROE Visual US.

In total, the LED canvas for this years’ show added up to almost seven million pixels of the best state-of-the-art technology that could be displayed. Two of the performances were filmed back at darmah’s Miami studio on their revolutionary dXR stage, which relies on Black Onyx B02 LED walls and Black Marble BM4 LED floor to create multidimensional XR sets. 

More info:
https://darmah.com/about/

Products used:
BM4
CB8
Vanish V8S
ROE Strips