Dead & Company Dead Forever at Sphere

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:13:19
Brandon
Are you ready? We’re rolling….

00:00:13:21 – 00:00:36:11
Brandon
When that Ashbury sequence starts and the audience realizes what’s happening. There is such a roar from the crowd. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard in that room. It’s a real kick to see the audience just thrive off of certain key moments in the show.

00:00:36:13 – 00:00:46:10
Brandon
I still have Mississippi. I’m sorry. Hometown. Oh, you.

00:00:46:12 – 00:01:17:01
Brandon
Hi, I’m Brandon Kramer. I’m the Technical Director and one of the Creative Directors on Dead Forever at the Sphere. I also was the Camera Director for many of the shows. I’ve worked on some very big screens. But nothing quite like The Sphere. The networking. That’s inside of it. It’s kilometers long of fiber optic cable and server rooms after server rooms, and the amount of tech that’s supporting every pixel up on that screen is is incredible.

00:01:17:03 – 00:01:44:15
Brandon
And the band’s famous for having never really shied away from technology. There were one of the first bands to ever use Midi, for instance. Whether or not this is a capstone to, you know, their live career or not, it seemed like a brilliant next step in the evolution of this music. To see the, you know, original members of the band involved in such a technologically impressive project was was very cool.

00:01:44:17 – 00:01:57:04
Brandon
You know, I think this is a continuation of what they’ve what they’re really about, what they’ve always done.

00:01:57:06 – 00:02:20:01
Brandon
I think technology is at its best when it gets out of the way of the creative process. And when you’re working on screens, which are huge, like The Sphere, for instance, you can’t run away from the technical realities. You have to, you know, think about what are the consequences of, you know, setting off this render or what file format or reusing or, you know, all of these things add up.

00:02:20:04 – 00:02:42:22
Brandon
And so there’s a resource allotment that you have to consider when you know how far you pursuing a certain idea. And so you’re constantly balancing resources against creative. But what was nice is we were our tech stack was robust enough that we didn’t really have to let the technology limit the creative. It’s sort of like a funnel point.

00:02:42:22 – 00:03:11:10
Brandon
The you have all this, all this possibility, and it gets honed down into what’s the most important thing and what is required from the technology to make all that happen. On past productions, we’ve pretty much been limited to ten gig networks and pushing content at that ten gig or less speeds to our media server cluster. And even when we had the availability of working on 100 gig fiber networks, it never functioned at 100 gigs.

00:03:11:10 – 00:03:43:11
Brandon
And we were lucky to get 20. And I’ve worked on some big projects with very high resolutions, very high megapixel counts where we would wait hours to push content to all of our media servers. And with the WEKA cluster, that all changed. We were able to basically unlock RDMA technology that was effectively lying dormant on the Mellanox cards in all of these servers, and suddenly we were able to communicate at 400 gig line, speed up and push all of this content in minutes, not hours, to all of the servers.

00:03:43:11 – 00:04:08:16
Brandon
The speed at which we’re able to deliver push content to media servers was pretty revolutionary. I’ve never seen on any show I’ve worked on before, our ability to push that much content out across 100 gig network at that actual 100 gig speeds, and I think that’s down to the SMBW technology that’s on the WEKA cluster. When we knew we were going to get involved with that, Dead and Co at The Sphere,

00:04:08:19 – 00:04:38:02
Brandon
the only solution that popped in my mind at the time was WEKA. We were looking for a server that was going to be large enough, flexible enough to support a huge amount of data, because I knew from early tests that this was going to be on a scale like we had never seen before. We knew that we needed something just as robust, as a WEKA cluster to, to to get through this show, to deliver at the speeds that we needed to, to the media server cluster.

00:04:38:04 – 00:05:05:11
Brandon
And yeah, it’s just seemed like the best possible scenario. Once we had the WEKA cluster on site, it was effectively maintenance free. It really did exactly what we needed it to, and it was effectively for us, fairly plug and play. So we rendered well over 1.5PB of data we have on, on disk right now over a petabyte of final content.

00:05:05:11 – 00:05:27:21
Brandon
And then we in addition to that, we also have about half a petabyte of share records, all the ISO cameras from all the live shows. During a show we are encoding everything and storing that on the WEKA cluster and then distributing it across 100 gig network to the media servers. That is happening at effectively 100 gig line speed.

00:05:27:23 – 00:05:55:08
Brandon
So it’s very fast, to deliver very big files. Some of these final renders are over five terabytes. It’s a huge amount of data that’s flying around all of these networks. I think what WEKA allowed us to do was it essentially gets out of the way of the creative. It’s a fast tool. It’s has incredible depth and scalability, and we didn’t have to make any sacrifices in order to work with it.

00:05:55:09 – 00:06:21:11
Brandon
We we effectively were able to render with the image sequence formats that we wanted to use because of speed and flexibility. We didn’t have to worry about the bandwidth of the read and rights coming off of the server. It just never once got in our way. So little things like that add up huge… Otherwise we’d be waiting around and maybe we would miss our opportunity to see something creative or have a conversation about it.

00:06:21:13 – 00:06:42:06
Brandon
All of that time you spend trying to get around hurdles add up to missed opportunities with the creative, and if you if you aren’t faced with those hurdles, if it’s just out of your way, then it you stay in one mode, you stay in a creative mode, and then you have a more successful show as a result. Yeah, I don’t know where else to go with that.

00:06:44:03 – 00:06:50:01
Brandon
I think you nailed it already… Okay.

View Full Uncut Interview

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:08:17
Sure. You ready? Yes. Okay. And.

00:00:08:18 – 00:00:40:11
The good. Cool. Rehearsal, my friend. And thank you so much for joining us today. let’s start with an introduction. Just tell us your name, your title company. Yeah, my name is Brandon Kramer. I’m a technical director and creative director. I work with Treatment Studios, based in London. And what was your role? the idea for representing, undead forever.

00:00:40:11 – 00:00:56:12
I was a technical term, I was sorry, let me start that over on Dead Forever. I was the technical director, and I also a creative director. One of the key pieces in the show. And I was the live camera director as well.

00:00:56:14 – 00:01:24:21
So, let’s try to piece together. Yeah, sure. Time. Yeah, it’s a little complicated. so for Dead Forever, I was the technical director. I was also, creative director for the Ashbery sequence, which begins and ends for the show. And I was also the live camera director for the iMac for all the shows. Fantastic. Thank you. Let’s just start by talking a little bit more about you.

00:01:24:23 – 00:01:46:17
I didn’t know you were your Jerry. How did you get into how do you get it? How did you get into this? Like, how do, get started in this industry? I started pretty young. my dad was a director, and so I would tag along and, work in his, studio as a grandpa, as a gaffer, as an assistant camera operator.

00:01:46:17 – 00:02:24:06
And I worked my way up into editing. and then I branched out to do a lot more advertising work, and then eventually went into documentary films where I, became mostly a colorist specialist and color graded an Academy Award nominated film. And then right around 2015, I started working with treatment. the first project I worked on was the, U2 2015 Innocence and Experience tour, where I went out, on, on tour with the crew and worked on some of the content for that tour.

00:02:24:08 – 00:02:53:16
That’s where I first met Willie Williams, and that’s began my relationship with, working with treatment. Fantastic. so that’s quite a quite a journey. Did you kind of get the motive for working for the team at that point, or. Yeah, I think the transition from working in TV commercials and then moving into doing more music based content was, you know, very enticing and much more exciting for me.

00:02:53:18 – 00:03:21:01
And I had some experience doing music videos. I, you know, I worked for a while at a, at a studio where we did a lot of work with, Katy Perry and Kenny Chesney and, and the like, and, that that parlayed into working, doing more tour visuals where we would create content for tours and, you know, that became more and more of a thing because it, you know, usually live shows were dominated by lights and occasionally some video support.

00:03:21:01 – 00:03:51:13
And then content became more and more of the centerpiece of a lot of these tours and productions. And so, you know, from working on pre produced, rephrase that, I guess. Yeah. Having started working on pre produced pieces for tours to then transitioning to actually going out on tour with bands and creating content, you know, day after day with them to support their tours.

00:03:51:15 – 00:04:16:00
you know, it became a very interesting lifestyle shift for me and really opened up my eyes to a lot more. Awesome. Can you share some of the bands and acts that you were a part of the year? Yeah, I’ve worked with U2. you know, quite a lot. I’ve. I’ve had the pleasure of working with them for on over four tours.

00:04:16:02 – 00:04:50:07
and then including the sphere. and I’ve worked with, Katy Perry, Billie Eilish. I’ve worked with Fleetwood Mac. dead and Company, John Mayer, the Rolling Stones and Adele, to name a few. Amazing, incredible career. So can you share with us just a little bit about Treatment Studios collaboration with them Company and Secure? How did that operation start?

00:04:50:09 – 00:05:09:02
Yeah, I think that collaboration with Treatment Studios and Denton Company, basically came out of their relationship working with John Mayer on his solo tours, which, you know, was was a great relationship. And they did a lot of great content for, for many years with John. And so there was a lot of trust and, and appreciation there.

00:05:09:02 – 00:05:40:00
And, so a couple of years ago, they started doing content for the Denton Company tours as well. and, you know, then this project came up and it was, you know, just being seen as the best possible scenario treatment by that point had, a lot of experience with the sphere, having worked on the U2, UV tour and had a relationship already with John and in and a growing one with Denton Company, so it just seemed like the perfect fit.

00:05:40:01 – 00:06:11:14
And so, as you started this project, I mean, the sphere is a bit daunting in terms of its, scale and, and people challenges, mounting a production there. How did you approach, some of the just hearing my own equipment? Yeah. No, I know the feeling. so how did you approach this show? And, what was the process behind that?

00:06:11:16 – 00:06:36:06

Sorry, guys. Brad, can we stop the recording and tell him the cancellation of the streams video? We’ll do that. Stand by really quick. Sure. We will just keep rolling here locally. End user. Thank you. Is there any way you could rotate that monitor? Just slightly. Just like 1 or 2 degrees? that would be clockwise. Like that?

00:06:36:07 – 00:07:02:19
Yeah. Just a hopes. Yeah. That’s perfect. Perfect. Yeah. I’m a little more square on the internet. Change my eyeline or anything. So if there’s something or so. I hope that helps. But, yeah. Yeah, it’s still there. Maybe a little less. I’m gonna grab a sip of water that way. I think my best ignorance is. Is that going to be a new way to talk?

00:07:02:21 – 00:07:06:01
Because I’m. I’m.

00:07:06:03 – 00:07:22:18
So, what do you think about the volume? We really understand. We can also turn on the volume a bit. Or you could. It might be a little. I might struggle a little bit to hear her, but I’ll that we can try that if that’s distracting. Yeah. Let’s try it out. Just just tell us if you think it’s more important that you’re.

00:07:22:20 – 00:07:55:10
You can hear me, Brian. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It’s time to talk. Sure. Okay. Yeah. So you’re on. Okay. we are, still. We pick up. Okay. And when you’re ready, let me know. Yeah. I’m ready. Yeah. We might need to repeat that question. You got it. So, as you were, walk us through the process of, how you sort of turned off the production that you’re getting remotely.

00:07:55:12 – 00:08:28:23
Yeah, it really starts with the creative. you know, there needs to be a concept that’s going to support these songs and and the space at the same time. So a lot of creative ideation happened early on. And then once, once ideas started to sort of crystallize into into a path. Then we started to execute those ideas and then started to render out all of that content and then program it into the into the show.

00:08:29:00 – 00:08:58:21
I can probably give you a better answer than that, but I’m struggling for. Well, yeah. Come back around and around. Yeah, I can ask other questions too. so when you started working on this show, we’re working with the band to really understand what their vision for the production would be. What were some of the ideas, some of the must haves, as you prepare for this production, creatively speaking.

00:08:58:23 – 00:09:23:02
Yeah. Okay. Well, I think one of the, one of the centerpieces of the show is the intro and outro, and that is based on the idea that we start present day on Ashbury Street. you know, at the house where, sorry, I’m at. I need to fact check myself here real quick. Sorry. I don’t want to say something stupid.

00:09:23:04 – 00:09:48:19
is it Haight Street or Ashbury? It’s 710 Ashbury. Okay. Yeah. All right. And I’ll start over again. One of the centerpieces of the show is actually the book end of it. It’s the beginning and the end, which starts and ends on Ashbury Street in San Francisco. And we begin modern day. And then we go up into space, effectively beginning our journey through all these different worlds.

00:09:48:19 – 00:10:33:14
And then at the end of the show, we we come back down to earth and land and, we’re transported back to 1966 when the band lived in that house on Ashbury Street. And that was a really important narrative piece to the whole show. and I worked extensively with ILM on developing that piece, and but that idea came from John and Bob, and that was really important that that basically creates, you know, some structure to the show or otherwise we can have a lot more freedom, where we go in different worlds throughout the others, throughout the rest of this, throughout the rest of the show.

00:10:33:16 – 00:10:38:02
Maybe. Yeah.

00:10:38:04 – 00:11:07:15
And. Yeah, I mean, I try to remember what I said, That. Yeah, that that element, the the Ashbury sequence. bookending the show was a really important concept in the narrative cycle of the whole show, and it really came from Bob and John’s ideas. and it’s it allows us to do a lot more things within the middle of the show.

00:11:07:17 – 00:11:35:18
it’s but it is grounded. So it brings us back to the roots of the band. And conceptually, that’s a lot of what the show is about. So for a band that is legendary for touring and bringing the music to its fans, was this was this new medium of bringing the fans to the music? was that was, how was the creative process around that?

00:11:35:20 – 00:12:04:05
just developing a show, in in terms of that, I obviously had this podcast, that process. I think there were some key points that they, you know, the band wanted to cover creatively and give a nod to the legacy, the story of the band to serve the songs that they wanted to play and entertain the audience at the same time.

00:12:04:06 – 00:12:36:12
And I think it would it’s it’s not, it’s not a retrospective piece, but there’s a there’s a sense of nostalgia a little bit to it, and there’s a, a sense of, you know, brand new frontier is being, tackled because we’re in the sphere and, and there’s really, you know, nothing more novel than that and its use of technology and the bands famous for having never really shied away from technology that were one of the first bands to ever use Midi, for instance.

00:12:36:14 – 00:13:01:12
they, you know, I think this is a continuation of what they’ve, what they’re really about, what they’ve always done. And, it’s incredibly entertaining, the experience, watching the crowds take it all in and, and embrace it and enjoy it. And the things that people have said to us about how pitch perfect they felt like it all really was to them.

00:13:01:14 – 00:13:27:19
And that’s a that’s a not fan base that, you know, would know and, you know, and is deeply appreciative of what, you know, what they were, what a part of with the creative. So how do you, for a band that is notorious for the improvizational. Yeah, I do plan for that, especially when you’re running in 16 by 16 days.

00:13:27:21 – 00:14:04:12
Yeah. that must have been a significant challenge for us for that a little bit I think for. Yeah. given their improv, given their improvizational nature, we needed to create a toolkit, a creative toolkit, which would allow us to, use different looks in different moments of the show. use different creative executions to support different songs, and those needed to be long enough to support an extended jam wherever they might go next.

00:14:04:12 – 00:14:31:22
And then we found along the way a ways of transitioning from one piece of content into another to support more of the the arc of a song, for instance. So, you know, Terrapin Station, which has you know, suites of music built into it. When we transition from one suite to another, we transition from one visual to another. But we made sure we had enough heads and tails, as it were, to basically get in and out of different moments.

00:14:31:22 – 00:15:00:16
And it it actually was daunting because it meant that what we were rendering was significantly longer than what we might do if, say, we were producing a piece of content to a time coated track of a finite length. And it also meant we had to be pretty nimble on how we program things so that we could essentially busk through the show as the band performed and be responsive and not reactive to what they were doing.

00:15:00:18 – 00:15:30:00
So how do you build a text to support something? I guess we’ll get a little bit into. Yes. Or just, the challenge of that, but, what? As you start to build this show, walk us through the process of how do you develop the underlying technology to write all this? Yeah. So early on, I did a bunch of testing of, you know, different resolutions, different file formats.

00:15:30:02 – 00:16:04:00
And from those tests, basically derived it like what the workflow was going to need to be in order to execute stuff quickly. render times, read and write times, storage requirements and, you know, there’s nothing small about the sphere and the tech stack to support this creative needed to be, you know, very robust and, you know, connected at, you know, the highest possible network speeds and have the, you know, have plenty of render power to support the creative ideas.

00:16:04:02 – 00:16:20:06
So we, you know, sized, I think, pretty correctly to what what was the lift. Let me let me rephrase that.

00:16:20:08 – 00:16:44:19
All right. That’s drawing a blank here. Yeah. So we we estimated what it was going to require in terms of computing power to produce and render out some of these pieces. And then, honestly, we pushed that kind of past where, you know, where we were initially prepared. And we had to add a little bit more horsepower to the operation.

00:16:44:21 – 00:17:10:16
this given how long some of these pieces are and how they’re rendered in a very photoreal kind of way, you know, it was a it was a significant, challenge. So, yeah, it was I don’t know what lost their lives. Okay, great. so and, and I am also operating on tired brains have put together some problems.

00:17:10:16 – 00:17:37:19
And so, obviously the sphere is unprecedented in terms of the scale, the know that a couple productions that are now. But I’m sure each production is unique. can you just share a little bit about us within the sphere? What is it like walking in there and having the amount of production there, and how is that unique, to other experiences?

00:17:37:21 – 00:18:05:23
yeah, the sphere is unique and in several ways. One, it’s just a canvas being spherical. You you have to sort of play by or break those rules. And so it’s a unique, creative starting point just from, just from the shape of the screen and, and how that light coming off of that screen, how the content is, is perceived in the room, both, both based on its perspective to the audience and then also how light is being transmitted off of that screen.

00:18:06:01 – 00:18:27:20
because it’s in a it’s a very omnipresent, source in the room. And, you know, there’s never really a point in any of these shows where the where the screen is off, it’s always doing something. And maybe that’s just supporting imag, image magnification, live camera footage, of this, of the band. Maybe it’s content in a very minimal way.

00:18:27:20 – 00:18:49:05
Or maybe it’s an overwhelming amount of content and a very, you know, high, intense, graphic way where it’s coming at you from essentially all sides. But, you know, one of the first things we had to, you know, really think strongly about was very carefully about was the perspective. What does this look like to people in the sphere from different points of view in the room?

00:18:49:06 – 00:19:14:03
Does it agree with most of them? Does it make sense? And there’s a couple rules that we sort of drew for ourselves to sort of follow. And sometimes we would break those. But by and large it was helpful to have some parameters. The other thing about the sphere is it’s just it’s scale. It is immersive. It does wrap all the way around your vision and and up up above your vision as well.

00:19:14:09 – 00:19:45:10
So it’s, it’s very unique. And in that regard as well, I’ve worked on some very big screens, but nothing quite like the sphere. The sphere is also unique and that it’s great. Let me back up. I think what’s also unique about the sphere, from the standpoint of teams that are used to working on tour visuals, is it’s not another venue on the tour.

00:19:45:10 – 00:20:12:19
It is the tour. It is the entire creative premise of of what you’re creating. So it’s a different mindset that you get into, you’re you’re there, you’re you’re focused on this one canvas and, you know, it changes how we approach what we’re doing. it’s, we’re technically, remarkable, but excuse me, it’s a technically remarkable building.

00:20:12:21 – 00:20:42:19
the networking that’s inside of it is vast. It’s kilometers long of fiber optic cable. And, you know, server rooms after server rooms and the amount of tech that’s supporting every pixel up on that screen is, is incredible. so there’s a learning curve to how you approach getting the creative onto that screen. And it’s, yeah, it’s a very unique experience.

00:20:42:21 – 00:21:04:08
You walk us through a little bit of the pre-production, you know, as you’re leading up to the show and having to render all that content, what was the experience like? and just, you know, what were you expecting them to do? Yeah. So there, there would be ideas that we would render and, you know, to,

00:21:04:10 – 00:21:23:06
I’m sorry. Let me back up, and make the you start with in, in the run up to the show. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. In the run up to the show there, there’s a lot of creative ideation. There’s, there’s, you know, we try a creative idea one way and, and we tried another and another and we just keep refining some ideas.

00:21:23:08 – 00:21:46:13
Some ideas go by the wayside. And so there’s a resource allotment that you had to consider when you know how far you, you pursuing a certain idea, how much to how full up are you rendering it? is this still in its infancy, or is this a much more fully fledged idea? And so you’re constantly balancing resources against creative.

00:21:46:15 – 00:22:09:16
But what was nice is we were our tech stack was robust enough that we didn’t really have to let the technology limit the creative. It was more about just getting the ideas out there and focusing on the on the art and the creative and making sure that worked for the band and the songs. And it was a long process.

00:22:09:18 – 00:22:28:23
we spent several months off site and then we came on site and spent the better part of a month, on site and in the run up to the first shows and, and then, the week thereafter as well, where we were continuing to make and finish content because we had to make enough content to make every show unique.

00:22:29:01 – 00:22:56:11
And so while we were ready for show one and show two and share three, we were still rendering and working on content for shows 4 or 5 and six. and, you know, that continued to a lesser extent once we were off site. But it’s it was, you know, it’s sort of like a funnel point and you have all this, all this possibility, and it gets honed down into what’s the most important thing, what’s going to support these shows, what programs together.

00:22:56:11 – 00:23:29:07
Well, and then what are you learning as you’re doing that? how does that inform your next creative steps? And what is required from the technology to make all that happen? Can you, share what what led you to where and how did you, start looking? Yeah, I was introduced to work, in 2023, in the run up to our YouTube show at the sphere.

00:23:29:09 – 00:24:08:10
we were looking for a server that was going to be large enough, flexible enough to support a huge amount of data because I knew from early tests that this was going to be on a scale like we had never seen before. And, I had a great conversation with Jonathan and, Anthony at the time. I looked into the tech specs of what Webxr could do, and it seemed honestly like the best possible scenario, and I just felt very comfortable with the conversations I was having around it when it became a reality.

00:24:08:12 – 00:24:47:06
it was, you know, once, once we had the Webxr cluster on site, it was immediate leaves. boy. Sorry. Once we had once we had the worker cluster on site with us and we started rendering to it, it was effectively, you know. Maintenance free. It just really it really did exactly what we needed it to. And and however it does what it does in the background, the speed factor, it it’s it’s nothing that you have to really worry about.

00:24:47:11 – 00:25:21:11
It was it was effectively for us fairly plug and play. So when we when we knew we were going to get involved with that Inco at the sphere, the only solution that popped in my mind at the time was Weka. We knew. We knew that we needed something just as robust, as a Weka cluster to to to get through this show again, to, to support the creative, to deliver at the speeds that we needed to, to the media server cluster.

00:25:21:13 – 00:25:53:23
And yeah, it’s just seemed like the best possible scenario. Much data this, this huge project from the state, was asking about, production. And then can you also share how much data is running the through the production, streaming, during the live production as well? Yeah. So we rendered well over 1.5PB of data for this project.

00:25:54:03 – 00:26:20:05
And, you know, some of that ended up being deleted because we actually were running out of space. but we have on, on disk right now over a petabyte of final content rendered. And then we in addition to that, we also have about half a petabyte of show records, all the ISO cameras from all the live shows during a show.

00:26:20:05 – 00:26:46:22
We’re playing back off of disguise media servers. but to get the content to the disguise media servers we are encoding everything and storing that on the Weka cluster and then distributing it across 100 gig network to the media servers. And that is happening at effectively a 100 gig line speed from the Wako cluster. So it’s very fast to deliver very big files.

00:26:47:00 – 00:27:17:13
Some of these files are some of these final renders are over five terabytes for just one piece of content. And that gets encoded and then distributed across all the media servers. And it’s it’s a it’s a huge amount of data that’s flying around all of these networks and ultimately and ends up on the screen. So like to spend a little time just getting some of your perception about the show.

00:27:17:13 – 00:27:40:08
First of all, congratulations. I know we’re getting close to the end of the run right now. And the, the, the the press feedback has been absolutely astounding. so, you know, this was a really significant show, and the band had been kind of effectively announced that it was ending, you know, ending its tour and, and going off the road.

00:27:40:08 – 00:28:07:17
So to be able to bring this show to fans, well, I must have been a really important moment. We just share a little bit about, you know, personally how it felt to be able to bring this show to fans. and, and what that meant to you. Sure. Yeah. I think the Grateful Dead songbook means a lot to me personally.

00:28:07:17 – 00:28:27:21
And I’ve I’ve definitely I’ve seen Grateful Dead shows. I’ve seen a lot of the offshoot bands, such as Father and, Phil and Friends and then dead and Co. and so when I heard that we were going to get involved with this project, I was very excited. I thought, this is, this is incredible that they’re going to do a show there.

00:28:27:23 – 00:28:49:06
I immediately started thinking about, like, all the how are we going to do this? questions. Because that’s just where I go to. But, and then when I, was asked to get involved as the, the live video camera director, I was very thrilled. because I have a I have a second hand nature, sort of familiarity with these songs.

00:28:49:08 – 00:29:21:10
And it was. Yeah, it was it was very exciting. I felt like this was whether or not this is a capstone to, you know, their live career or not. it’s it seemed like a brilliant next step in the evolution of, of this music and, you know, to to see the, you know, original members of the band involved in such a technologically impressive project was was very cool.

00:29:21:12 – 00:29:49:12
And, the energy that that the performers on stage, bring to this music is. Yeah, it’s a it’s really amazing. These performances have been top notch. And I think it’s a it’s an impressive environment from a sound standpoint. And I think the band is thriving on that. And then what they’re able to do creatively and their crowd reaction to a lot of that creative is also very, special.

00:29:49:12 – 00:30:14:11
And you don’t you don’t see that in many other venues, and you don’t see that on many other shows where where the content gets these huge responses from the audience. And so we have to play that in a, in a, in a, a careful way, I guess, or we have to we have to play that too. It all has to work for the songs effectively.

00:30:14:11 – 00:30:37:05
So when when we have a big creative moment, it needs to pair well with the music. And I think we’ve done a really, really good job of doing that. I think there’s, you know, to hear songs, you know, where now I’m just going to go off on a weird tangent there, so I’ll stop myself right now. That was very good.

00:30:37:07 – 00:31:01:06
so has a little bit more about the fan response. It sounds like it’s just been absolutely phenomenal. I think in some of our earlier discussions, you were really talking about how, you know, the, the, the, the community, the fan base and the community and, that there’s been a little more context on. Sure. what this meant for them.

00:31:01:08 – 00:31:30:13
Yeah, it’s it’s a real kick to. It’s a real kick to see the audience just thrive off of certain key moments in the show. And like the first show we did when when that Ashbury sequence starts, when the camera starts to lift off the ground and the audience realizes what’s happening and they feel like they’re moving momentarily and they’re they’re understand what’s about to unfold in front of them.

00:31:30:15 – 00:31:52:10
there was such a roar from the crowd. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard in that room today. And and it was such a joyous energy as well. So, you know, that that vibe, this crowd, it’s just an infectious feeling. It’s a sense of community. And everyone’s just enjoying it all together at the same time.

00:31:52:10 – 00:32:21:00
And they’re there for the music, but we’re giving them something in addition to that. And it’s it’s really it’s really special. There’s we have a number of moments in the show we call portals, where we portal into another environment where we transition from something you’ve been, you know, experiencing for a while into something completely different. And one of the, one of the coolest portals we do is into Egypt, and we have this portal called Horus Portal.

00:32:21:02 – 00:32:44:20
And when that and basically takes over the entire sphere of screen and we’re all going down this tunnel together, it’s just it, you know, the hair stands up on the back of your neck and everyone gets super excited about whatever is next. And then suddenly we’re at the pyramids in Giza, which is a reference to a very famous show that the band did, I believe, in 78.

00:32:44:22 – 00:33:27:03
and you know, there’s a number of those. We do a whole sequence, that we call venues and where we go from one famous venue to another where the band played historic shows. The Fillmore, Radio City Music Hall, Hampton Coliseum and, and then we recently added another piece of content where we come through the doors at Hampton Coliseum, and we end up basically in a, alternate reality version of the sphere where the entire audience is dancing skeletons and the response that you that you hear from the crowd seeing something that you know, they’ve not seen yet on Instagram or YouTube and they’re, they’re they’re witnessing these things for the first

00:33:27:03 – 00:33:34:14
time. It’s just it’s it’s really special. It’s it’s really fun.

00:33:34:16 – 00:34:01:18
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I this is a little bit better to understand a little bit more industry wise. And you know, obviously the spear has come in and really transformed, transformed the industry and set a new bar in live entertainment. I would just love to hear a little bit about your observations about how technology has really been transforming what you’ve been able to do, especially in the live music format.

00:34:01:19 – 00:34:14:19
any time where you see, we see it going, take us a little bit on that journey. But you’ve observed this, the industry as an whole. Wow.

00:34:14:21 – 00:34:36:20
I think we’re yeah, yeah, it’s a big question. I think where things are going is, is more and bigger. Like it’s just the scale and scope of everything just seems to keep just exponentially growing. And you know, you do a show at a, at a venue like The Sphere and then you know what? What’s next? What can be one bigger one better than that.

00:34:36:22 – 00:35:03:06
And you know, there’s I think it sort of opens things up to a lot more video content being integral to the shows. I think that’s definitely a trend line where it’s it’s, you know, it’s no longer just, you know, about lights and about, you know, some level of content, the content sort of is the centerpiece of a lot of these environments that the band then is within.

00:35:03:08 – 00:35:47:12
and it all needs to make sense together. But I see that as like a major trend line where, where all of this is headed and then the scale, size and screens are just getting bigger and bigger until they are the biggest lighting source in the room. or in the outdoor space, as it were. So it’s, you know, I’m there’s some other interesting technology, you know, there’s some other interesting trends happening with XR and, and, you know, technologies, I worked on a very cool project with Billie Eilish, and, and that was basically we were able to transcend different environments, throughout this, you know, a 13 song live

00:35:47:12 – 00:36:25:18
performance. And that was all done in the soundstage in front of a camera, not in a live room with a giant audience. but I think that’s effectively kind of what we what has been transpired. We’ve gone from that studio based model into a live room model with shows like U2, you’ve and and dead and co atmosphere. it’s we’re able to take people and transport them into different worlds, which then affect mood and affect, you know, can be very effective with music and it’s it’s all very interesting.

00:36:25:18 – 00:36:55:09
I’m working on right now on Adele’s show here in Munich. And that, I think, is this now the biggest linear screen I think ever. it’s three times the width of Joshua Tree, which I worked on in 2019, which at the time was the biggest screen and highest resolution screen, I believe, ever used in a live show. so everything just keeps dwarfing the next, you know, the previous thing.

00:36:55:09 – 00:37:19:10
So. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Grab a coffee. I just want to touch it back on, like you’re just a little bit more than just, you know what? What what has the work on the platform helped make possible? That might not have been possible before. And I realize that this year. Kind of. Yeah. You’re kind of is like a whole new world unto itself.

00:37:19:12 – 00:37:45:01
But if you can just share a little bit more about how that personality, has helped you and your team create this or a setting for that. So, yeah, I think technology is at its best when it gets out of the way of the creative process. And when you’re working on screens, which are huge, like the sphere, for instance, it there’s you can’t run away from the technical realities.

00:37:45:01 – 00:38:07:17
You have to, you know, think about what are the consequences of, of, you know, setting off this render or what file format or reusing or, you know, all of these things add up to whether or not you are going to find yourself in a very painful situation or be able to think creatively until the first show, until you’ve delivered.

00:38:07:20 – 00:38:43:15
And I think what work allowed us to do was it it essentially gets out of the way of the creative. It’s a fast tool. It’s has an incredible depth and scalability and I we didn’t have to make any sacrifices in order to work with it. We we effectively were able to render with the image sequence formats that we wanted to use because of speed and flexibility in our pipeline, and we didn’t have to consider drive space very much because we had a very deep cluster to work with.

00:38:43:17 – 00:39:09:20
And then the encoding time is to turn that into what we would eventually deliver to the media server. We didn’t have to worry about the bandwidth of the read and writes coming off of the server. It just never once got in our way. And so we were able to keep running and basically build, you know, and, and infrastructure to support a show that I don’t know has ever been built before.

00:39:09:22 – 00:39:38:19
on the post-production side. And, you know, we learned a lot along the way. But effectively, what we roadmap is exactly what we created. And it, it, it performs exactly what we, you know, perform better than how we would have expected it to. And, you know, just down to the speed at which we are able to deliver push content to media servers was pretty revolutionary.

00:39:38:19 – 00:40:04:05
I’ve never seen, you know, on any show I’ve worked on before, the our ability to push that much content out across 100 gig network at at actual 100 gig speeds. And I think that’s down to the SMB technology that’s on the worker cluster. So little things like that add up huge. Otherwise we’d be waiting around and maybe we would miss our opportunity to see something creative or have a conversation about it.

00:40:04:07 – 00:40:28:08
So, you know, all that time you spend rendering and and and waiting on things, all of, all of that time you spend trying to get around hurdles in your tech, the logical pipeline, add up to missed opportunities with the creative. And if you if you aren’t faced with those hurdles, if it’s just out of your way, then you stay in one mode.

00:40:28:08 – 00:40:35:04
You stay in a creative mode, and then you have a more successful show as a result.

00:40:35:06 – 00:41:15:03
Yeah. So I think you covered a great deal of ground running room. Any feedback, anything else that you feel like we need to cover? Planning? You’re an incredible interview with subject and good. You gave us really well those numbers there. Yeah. I was just going to add that I was just talking to you. I think, if there’s anything more to say about the S&P is in BW vertical, I think that came out just a little bit, just it’s it’s been a, is a surprise to see how well performs on the platform.

00:41:15:05 – 00:41:36:08
you know, I think, like, obviously we had the with the you do show there like things getting set up and going to the set up is just incredible. And so I don’t know if there’s more to say that for all the outputs in Australia with this technology, I could try to rephrase it a bit and maybe like work rdm a into that.

00:41:36:11 – 00:41:57:23
Like from a techie standpoint, as long as you’re fact checking what I’m saying, I think I know what I’m saying, but okay. Yeah. And I’m not sure how to jump what the jumping off point of this topic would be. But, Maybe like, you can lean into, like, in terms of the tech stack or. Yeah, the technical situation.

00:41:58:02 – 00:42:36:17
Sure. and then we’re going to let me try this. on past productions, we’ve pretty much been limited to ten gig networks and pushing content at a ten gig or less speeds to our media server cluster. And even when we had the availability of working on 100 gig fiber networks, it never functioned at 100 gigs. And we were lucky to get 20 and I’ve worked on some big projects with very high resolutions, very high megapixel counts where we would wait hours to push content to all of our media servers, and with the Weka cluster, that all changed.

00:42:36:17 – 00:43:03:06
We were able to basically unlock our DMA technology that was effectively lying dormant on the Mellanox cards. In all of these servers, and suddenly we were able to communicate at 400 gig line speed, and push all of this content in minutes, not hours, to all of the servers, which again, just gets us to the creative finish line much faster.

00:43:03:08 – 00:43:22:09
That was a slam dunk. It was a slam dunk. It really wanted to just throw some acronyms at me and I’ll sound smarter. I do need to correct one thing I said earlier, it’s back in my introduction, but we can get to that at the end if you if we can. Yeah, I said I directed all of the shows.

00:43:22:09 – 00:43:42:04
I did it, I directed all of the shows that were in the original run, but because of my commitment on a Dell, I had to hand over the video directing to somebody else. So the last six shows are not mine. But you can also snap, snip that out or I can rephrase it. Whatever you need. Yeah. If you want you we can do a couple more.

00:43:42:10 – 00:44:18:13
Sure. Introductions. Just. Yeah, yeah. This is this is a little daunting. real quick water and anything else that we want to discuss. Yeah. How do you feel completely changes in terms of the story arc going to begin with? With the end, printing anything more? Just this, your, you know, your personal and professional life within you, working on this production and just what it meant to you personally and professionally?

00:44:18:15 – 00:44:39:06
maybe just to capture a little bit more on that would be great. Sure. Yeah. I think it’s okay if you could set me up for that a little bit. just so I get rolling into it. Yeah. So. So, Brandon, when we were talking in the past, you shared with my mom at the top of the call you were sharing as well.

00:44:39:07 – 00:44:59:15
that things that the songs meant a lot to you. And what if you share a little bit more about, working on this production has meant you personally. Yeah, I mean, this this production has been, you know, very special to me personally. It’s probably one of my all time favorite, productions that I’ve been involved with.

00:44:59:15 – 00:45:21:18
Now, it’s not only creatively was it very impressive and all the work that treatment put into it was, was just really well executed and and brilliant and thoughtful. but to be present for these shows and to be in the room with this music being played night after night as well as it’s, as it’s been played, I mean, these are some amazing performances.

00:45:21:20 – 00:45:50:21
Was was really special to me because I am a long time fan of this music, and to be able to contribute to that creatively, effectively, in real time, doing the live camera direction, I mean, it’s it’s as good as it gets. So, that’s that’s been really wonderful and, very much appreciate the opportunity that, you know, and the trust that, you know, went into making that a reality.

00:45:50:23 – 00:45:59:06
yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about that. yeah, yeah, we need a change. A battery here. Yeah. Sorry.

00:45:59:06 – 00:46:30:10
For a long time. So I know like yeah, I’m trying to self edit a little bit, but I obviously I don’t want it to come across as this will be a dream. And like this. Okay. Yep. Both rolling okay. And. Thank you. Fantastic. Okay. They will pick it back up there. So thanks for sharing about personally it’s just talk a little bit about that trust relationship and for treating studios working with that in company.

00:46:30:10 – 00:46:56:12
You know, what is that trust relationship like when you’re starting off on a project with this having that trust I think you cultivate trust with By a track record, I think you and I think treatment cultivated a lot of trust with John by successful in delivering a lot of amazing content for his solo tours and and then delivering some top level content for some of the recent dead and co tours.

00:46:56:14 – 00:47:21:08
And so that was already a well established, you know, positive relationship. I think, you know, treatment has relied on me to come up with solutions to very large scale projects a number of times, and with the success with the success of the U2 show at the Sphere, which was, a task, an undertaking like none other on the content side alone.

00:47:21:10 – 00:47:44:23
you know, we were well poised to take this on. We had a lot of confidence. We upped the ante quite a bit because we had a lot more things to render, and we went for a lot more realism and what we were executing. So it it, you know, we, we we pushed ourselves beyond what we learned on, on previous projects to, to tackle this.

00:47:44:23 – 00:48:08:23
And, you know, I think it all came up to the level, which I think that this band deserves. And, you know, because this is a landmark series of shows, this is essentially a look back without being overly nostalgic at the entire canon of this, of this band’s history. And, you know, you can’t encapsulate all of that in one concert or even one residency.

00:48:08:23 – 00:48:34:09
But but there’s there’s looks at it and it’s it’s really special to the people that are at these shows. It’s a very, special. I just how appreciative the audience is of what what we’ve done. It’s it’s remarkable. and there’s so much enthusiasm for it. And, you know, I, I hope it, you know, continues down the line and we’ll see.

00:48:34:13 – 00:48:58:20
But, yeah, it’s it’s great. And yeah, I don’t know where else to go with that. I think you nailed it. All right. Okay. All right. when you’ve given us, that’s, the cool thing that just pretty much nailed all that takes care of one. yeah. It’ll be diminishing returns at some point. Yeah. Fair enough.

00:48:58:22 – 00:49:21:03
let’s just close out here. Could you please introduce yourself? sure. Your name and title and your role? we have partnerships.

Yeah, I am Brandon Kramer. I’m the technical director and one of the creative directors on Dead Forever at the sphere. I also was the camera director for many of the shows.

00:49:21:05 – 00:49:49:02
Better? Yeah. Okay, so we have, I think. All right, contestants in the role. So cool. Okay, we’re ready to cut. We are. All right, all right. Recording. Thank you so much. And we’re ready to get on your end. Michael and Team Andreas, both of you guys, thank you so, so much for making this such a smooth and successful