Christopher BarrettBritish band Bastille partnered with EMI Records, creative agency WPP and Epic Games to create what they claim to be a ground-breaking combination of cutting-edge virtual production technologies and live performance that enabled avatars to react with the band as they performed live.
Rather than putting the concert in the metaverse, where avatar artists play to avatar fans, the Give Me The Future Experience project saw new virtual production technologies used to bring the metaverse to a physical live performance.
The band played on stage in front of a huge screen hosting virtual worlds created using Unreal Engine. Fans from around the world were able to “scan themselves” into the virtual worlds as avatars and interact with the band members as they performed on stage.
The show has been released as an app for Meta’s Oculus Quest headsets which enables fans to view four songs from the performance in virtual reality.
Unreal Engine business development manager at Epic Games Rachel Stones said, “WPP created a living, breathing world in which the artists and virtual attendees were able to interact with each other in amazing virtual environments. By embracing Unreal Engine, the team had the flexibility to move and iterate on hero assets in real time, and this will change the way production teams think about the future of live events and build for the metaverse.”