Behind The Scenes: How We Streamed Real Concerts with Real Performers from a LEGO City

In this 8:53 video, we share the latest from MonoTown's ongoing development.

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this is the story of how we brought an incredible series of live concerts to my lego city during lockdown and shared them with the world i love live music 2020 put the brakes on that but one day while i was streaming a lego build and complaining about the lack of live shows a viewer mentioned that they were a dj who had been streaming shows on twitch curious i tuned into bear jokes dj's small but growing channel where you would play a set for a few hours each week it was great something to do during lockdown but also some really great music then i had an idea why not stage a live show from monotone my lego city we could build a stage and invite performers to play shows in front of a minifig audience how would we pull this off to make the show as interactive as possible we wanted video screens depicting the real life performers as part of the stage setup and we wanted to somehow make it look like the performers were actually on a lego stage we also wanted drone-like shots of the crowd and city and of course we needed lights and enchanting visualizations to complete the festival atmosphere we were going to have to practice a lot bear jokes djs would be broadcasting from sheffield more than five hours journey from edinburgh where the monotone tv studios are located we had never met in real life we also needed help to manage all the tech involved but we choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard because the challenge is one that we are willing to accept and one that we are unwilling to postpone here's how it worked and if you're curious about the exact equipment list i've linked the main gear below within the description bare jokes djs would stream their set like normal except they'd use a private twitch account specifically used for testing in edinburgh the lighting and visual effects computer would consume this stream and pipe the music through synesthesia a freemium live music visualizer designed for professional light productions the visualizations generated by synesthesia along with the visuals from the bear jokes dj's stream were then sent to obs and projected onto the screens set up within monotone using reverse projection a second streaming pc would also receive the bare jokes dj stream and use it as one of six main visual sources that were used for production and controlled again via obs the scenes we had were the main stage the side camera a roving camera performer's feet from bear jokes djs a four-up view which included all the above scenes and for bonus we also had an aerial view of the city and our producer station to give viewers a quick glimpse behind the scenes this feed of all the different camera angles was then split stream to both monotone tv's twitch account and bear jokes dj's twitch account using restream we incorporated both channels chat into an on-screen overlay so each channel could participate ultimately we ended up with four workstations that needed to be manned the producer responsible for controlling what viewers could see by switching between camera angles lights controlling the live music visualizer roving camera operator responsible for the flyover camera angles and our chat moderator normal moderation duties our first practice revealed a bunch of technical problems computers needed to be rebooted scenes need to be loaded into our streaming software which was obs and audio quality needed to be monitored and fixed two major problems surfaced immediately the first was the video feeds from the cameras simply wouldn't perform well all three mirrorless cameras were connected via usb using elgato cam links but we couldn't get a high quality stable picture the second problem was the cameras were also all overheating within minutes which meant they would just shut down after some research we fixed the overheating problem by downgrading from 4k resolution to 1080p which was what we were broadcasting that anyway so no big deal but this quality issue was a major obstacle i had a theory that the cameras were saturating the usb bus which was causing the image quality and stability problems after some more research i acquired a second hand magewell quad hdmi capture card which is a professional quality pizza kit designed for real tv studios but then we ran into another problem my new streaming pc which i just ordered from the great folks over at chill blast didn't have a pci expansion slot what having not built a pc in years it didn't even occur to me that this could be an issue a new motherboard was ordered arrived and was installed with the assistance of a loyal channel subscriber thank you finally we were ready for the second test and this time things work pretty well overheating issues were gone and the camera feeds were crisp and clear we just needed to film a loop for the green screen performers which actually took about 15 takes but the end result was better than we were hoping for we made a hype video explaining the origin of the block party because monotone had been prudent at the start of the pandemic it joined other locations like singapore new zealand and taiwan and being virus free we told some friends recorded an intro to get the crowd hyped and then it was time for the first show we were kind of expecting a bunch of tech issues we had no less than seven consumers of both streams the light machine the stream machine moderation machine and the crew with their personal stream viewers and we had two separate physical locations trying to work together in theory my gigabit internet connection could more than handle the traffic and we were running everything via ethernet but still we were pleasantly surprised though we streamed three hours of sweet beats to friends families and loyal channel supporters all over the world it was especially satisfying fielding questions from our younger watchers about how exactly we managed to shrink real people down to lego minifig size amazing our third show was to be a halloween special broadcast from a different stage with a more intimate spookier feel i wanted to incorporate the massive haunted house that had come out earlier in the year and provided a mysterious old town vibe that fit the theme of the evening to achieve this i used the recently released diagon alley buildings from the harry potter theme my custom sanctum santorum and my disney store modular which is built from the pieces contained within the tower bridge set and of course the haunted house cities used for inspiration for monotone are chicago with its elevated railway hong kong and beirut which both feature an eclectic mix of old and new and some really mountainous terrain and edinburgh with its incredibly beautiful and winding old town when placing the buildings i experimented with setting a few of them at an angle on the north side and felt like it really captured the character of an old european town square prague and maybe brussels come to mind to the south i built a mountain using lego set boxes and positioned a skyscraper i've been working on the ninjago temple and two other buildings i also added the ferris wheel for even more skyline interest i think the end result was spectacular and really evoked the hong kong and beirut look i was going for the halloween show with its new stage went well and was even introduced by a ghost story narrated in a spooky scottish accent i was super happy with the build and will take a number of the visual set pieces forward as we continue to build out mama town because the main room is dark lighting is one of the most important things when staging these concerts we want the audience to be able to see the city and detail while still enjoying the music to light these events we used a combination of hue bloom lights which are normally scattered around my flat micro leds from alibaba specifically built for lego which are powered by usb and an odd assortment of flashlights of different sizes we also use a cheap disco ball to provide the festival atmosphere and of course our lighting effects computer and then there's the smoke machine by the way don't try this at home we ran out of time to fully test this on our first show but on shows two and three it worked really well and provided a lot of visual interest along with two near misses on setting off the smoke alarm luckily the ceilings in the lego room are very tall i'm talking like almost 15 feet and by positioning a large window fan to blow air into the lego room we could get the smoke we needed without setting off the fire alarms looking back we're really proud of what we achieved and i think it turned out better than we expected several hundred people from all over the world tuned in to watch three shows during lockdown the chat was lively the beats were sweet and we had a lot of fun what's next definitely another concert or two definitely a lot more experimentation we're going to keep raising the bar and we hope to see you there.

Watch the Full Video

We're taking you behind the scenes to explain how we put on real concerts within a LEGO city, featuring real performers, and streamed three shows d...

Duration: 8:53 | Watch on YouTube

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This post is based on our YouTube video documenting the ongoing development of MonoTown, our LEGO city project. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue building and expanding our brick-based metropolis!