NEP Spain uses Ventuz for the Spanish-speaking content creators ESLAND Awards ceremony
NEP Spain uses Ventuz for the Spanish-speaking content creators ESLAND Awards ceremony
The ESLAND Awards are the biggest annual awards for Spanish-speaking streamers and content creators. They were created by Spanish YouTuber and Streamer David Cánovas Martínez aka “TheGregf”, and the first edition took place in Barcelona (Spain) in January 2022. The winners of each category are chosen 50% by public vote and 50% by votes from top content creators in the Spanish-speaking community.
The second edition of the ESLAND awards took place on January 29th, 2023, at the Auditorio Nacional theater in Mexico City (Mexico). This second edition had a record-breaking audience of more than 1.8 million viewers on the live Twitch stream, becoming the 3rd most watched video stream on the platform history.
NEP Broadcast Services Spain is part of the NEP group, a global group that provides technical and content creation services for the broadcast, live events and media industries worldwide. NEP Spain incorporated Ventuz real-time graphics platform to their services portfolio in early 2022 and has provided Ventuz graphics to various broadcast and live events during this time.
NEP Spain used Ventuz software to create all on-air graphics for the first edition of the ESLAND Awards in 2022, but for the 2023 edition they expanded their contribution by also generating real-time graphics to be displayed on stage during the event ceremony.
For the 2023 edition of the ESLAND Awards, NEP Spain created more sophisticated on-air graphics than they did for the 2022 edition. This included traditional lower thirds and other standard graphics that were used for both the live TV broadcasting and streaming over the internet. But the biggest addition was new graphics showing the awards nominees full screen graphics during the presentation of each category. The graphics included live video feeds from cameras on the venue, combined with live video streams and even pictures of each nominee, but the challenge was to be able to swap those live in case of connection problems, especially with the remote video streams.
“I created some logic in the Ventuz scene to help me with this issue, so it was very easy and quick to swap the videos and pictures of each nominee when we had connection problems” says María Chueca, graphics specialist at NEP Spain. “This was of great help during the gala because we had some connection issues with the live video feeds of some of the nominees, and Ventuz allowed us to change to some stored pictures on the fly without a problem”.
One of the main attractions and recurrent jokes during the gala was “El Artefacto”, an off-camera voice that had a constant conversation with the presenter. An actor placed in a room inside the theater was performing as “El Artefacto”, and the producers wanted to show him in an abstract way on the stage displays. NEP Spain designed some real-time particles reacting live to the actor´s voice and those waveform-like graphics were sent to the stage displays.
“Real-time graphics were key to create “El Artefacto”, we needed real-time reaction to the actor´s voice, something that was impossible with the media servers that were used for the video backgrounds at the gala” comments María Chueca. “I wasn´t very familiar with the use of particles in combination with audio data in Ventuz, but the interactive help scenes included with Ventuz were a lifesaver, giving me the chance to quickly understand the functionality and even reuse some of the example scenes”, continues María.
A second visual gag was a simulated blackout on stage. The idea was to use audience interaction to get the power back on and some VU meter graphics were displayed on the stage that reacted to the noise made by the audience and recharged the theater lights. This was only possible by using real-time graphics that reacted to the live audio input from the spectators in the theater.
“We are very happy with Ventuz because it gives us the flexibility needed to make all types of projects, from live events to broadcast, all using the same tool” commented Ferriol Moya, Production Manager at NEP Spain. “The outstanding reliability and stability of Ventuz is another reason why we consider Ventuz as one of the key tools for our current and future projects” finished Moya.
