Nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Emerging Media Program category and post-produced in Mistika Boutique, The Red Rocks Live In VR is a groundbreaking venture in the world of immersive music concerts.
Created by Meta, Light Sail VR, Dorsey Pictures and 7 Cinematics, this project delivers an unparalleled VR experience, combining high-quality visuals, immersive sound, and authentic artist performances.
The show is part of Meta’s Music Valley World in Horizons, requiring close collaboration with the team at Meta to ensure the capture and editing of the show were optimized for that environment. Additionally, the concerts are available on Meta Quest TV, where viewers can experience them in stereoscopic 3D with immersive spatial audio crafted by Q Department.
One of the significant challenges of Red Rocks Live In VR was managing the vast amount of media generated during filming, shared Matthew Celia, co-founder at Light Sail VR and creative director of the project.
“With 6 to 8 cameras capturing a two-hour show, much of the footage ultimately goes unused. To efficiently manage this, we used Mistika Boutique to process the footage as lower-quality proxy files for the offline edit. Once the edit was finalized, an XML was imported back into Mistika, allowing only the used media to be included in the timeline.”
This approach not only saved disk space but also sped up the post-production process, enabling the team to focus on the final picture’s stereo 3D and color grading.
Advanced 180º VR and stereoscopic support
Mistika Boutique’s VR Stitch tool was invaluable for processing 180º VR footage, providing precise control over alignment and stereo depth to create a comfortable and immersive viewing experience. The team also took advantage of Mistika’s ability to handle latlong windows and stereoscopic grading directly, avoiding the need for workarounds and ensuring a high-quality finish.
High end color workflows
Filming with the Canon R5C camera allowed them to capture and preserve every detail of the dynamic range and color space. “We have developed a very specific workflow that maximizes the quality we can get from the camera and Mistika processing is a big part of making that work,” adds Matthew Celia.
The goal of the color grade was to achieve a naturalistic look, as if the viewer were really at the Red Rocks venue in Denver, shared Jeff Sousa, the project’s lead colorist from Dungeon Beach.
“Mistika’s color tools helped create the feeling of high dynamic range elements within the SDR limitations of the Quest headsets. We used tools like the Soft Clip Ball of the primaries to tone map bright stage lights and the White Contrast of the Bands to shape the tonal scale, creating that HDR ‘feeling’ while maintaining detail. Finally, the hue vs hue curve played a crucial role, allowing me to reintroduce natural orange skin tones amidst the multicolored LED laser light show. This helped prevent the scene from feeling washed out and maintained the realism of seeing the artist up close.”
Meeting complex visual demands
A major challenge was fulfilling the client’s request to make both the audience and the iconic Red Rocks visible in the night-time footage. Mistika’s native stereo grading features allowed Jeff to brighten these dark elements without compromising the contrast optimized for the band under stage lights. “You only need to draw the shape once and its offset/disparity is automatically taken care of. This made it easy to deal with additional client requests such as darkening an emergency exit staircase, or sound cables that distracted the experience.”
According to Jeff, the biggest challenge when grading immersive projects, as opposed to traditional media, is directing the audience’s focus. “In immersive media, every part of the frame is in sharp focus, which is where color grading really comes into play. By enhancing color and contrast in the center of the frame, we can guide the viewer’s attention. We used subtle vignettes and prioritized skin tones in our ShowLUT, often boosting them with additional saturation in the fixed vector hue curves. A touch of cyan in the darks, as a complement to orange, further highlighted the musicians, making them stand out even more.”
Deciphering the Color Pipeline
- Capture: The footage was captured in Canon RAW and debayered to CLog3 / Canon Cinema Gamut
- Noise Reduction: The footage was converted to Linear for optimal noise reduction in Neat Video
- Stitching: Converted back to CLog3 for stitching
- Color Grading: The stitched footage was then converted to ARRI LogC4 / ARRI Wide Gamut 4, allowing the team to utilize print film emulation LUTs from ARRI’s REVEAL color science
- Output Display: The display LUT was set to P3-D65, with a Unicolor adjustment from 2.6 to 2.2 to match the Quest’s native gamma curve
- ShowLUT Creation: A combination of five different LUTs from ARRI was used, with varying opacities and adjustments in Mistika, which allowed each color grade layer to focus on either contrast or color. Specific tonal ranges were also adjusted using the RGB Keyer to maintain the integrity of bright and saturated LED light fixtures.
