Case Study

SOUNDTOY’S BEYOND TIME ARENA CONCERT

Miii and collaborators used Notch to bring a larger-than-life energy to Soundtoy’s special arena concert in support of their latest project in Chengdu.

V-Studio, Miii, and others worked with Sichuanese art-rockers Soundtoy to provide visuals for their most recent project, Beyond Time, in which the band explore ideas of space and time. They set out on an ambitious creative journey, aiming to visually and aurally depict time itself through the combined sights and sounds of the live performance.

The musicians, lighting crew, and video team came together to plan each individual song as precisely as possible. Because it was a one-off show, the team knew they could be exacting and decided to use Notch in tandem with Arena, creating endless combinations of live effects and pre-made videos, reworking and remixing to taste.

The team centred their production on the band’s song, “Life.” Following the theme of the song, the studio took graphic inspiration from a Ryuichi Sakamoto album cover. As Notch Designer Miii describes, “We thought that life could be compared to a long river, and its visualisation could be infinitely extended and stretched, complete with the people you might encounter in life.”

Because of our extremely tight schedule, we couldn't do a full rehearsal—only bits and pieces of testing. But Notch and Arena were so adaptable that it didn't matter at all! The atmosphere was electric with emotion, and even through our monitoring headphones, we could still hear the crowd's enthusiastic cheers.

Miii, Creative Director, Video Director, Animator, and Notch Designer

The team divided their material into three distinct layers using Notch's real-time chroma keying and virtual background features. After adding further interactivity, mixing other video sources and footage of the onstage dancers, they added final post-processing effects with Notch for a more refined, cohesive aesthetic.

The live stream of this performance, which won an MBIA Music Award for its quality, was viewed by 8.2 million people, setting a new record for the highest single-show online concert viewership of an independent band in China in 2024.