10 AR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020Pop
For J Balvin’s big entrance on Halloween in
his concert appearance on the video game
Fortnite, the Latin pop star rose through a
giant glowing pumpkin, just as he might
emerge from the bowels of Madison Square
Garden on a lift to meet thousands of fans.
Appearing as a green-haired, yellow-
suited Frankenstein’s monster, Balvin strut-
ted and vamped across the pumpkin
throughout his opening number — “Reggae-
ton,” a tribute to his musical roots — while
light beams flashed against a sepulchral set.
It was pure Vegas stagecraft.
But at the taping of his appearance in Cali-
fornia a week before, there was no pumpkin,
no riser and no crowd. Just Balvin, sur-
rounded by LED panels on a darkened
soundstage that, with some animation wiz-
ardry, allowed the virtual jack-o’-lantern —
along with a cast of skeletons and goblins —
to be digitally added to the performance, a
blurring of reality and fantasy well suited to
the game.
Balvin’s Halloween-theme appearance
was the latest high-profile music event on
Fortnite, the hugely popular video game that
has taken on a new importance to the enter-
tainment industry during the pandemic.
With concerts shut down, musicians have
flocked to virtual platforms to reach their
fans. A well-timed Fortnite show in April by
the rapper Travis Scott — with eye-popping
graphics that placed Scott within the game
— became a surprise cultural event, drawing
nearly 28 million players and offering proof
of concept to performers who had suddenly
found themselves homebound.
Balvin’s 13-song, 38-minute set on Hallow-
een was a lighthearted monster mash in
Day-Glo colors that resembled a futuristic
translation of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” with
dancers in costume as ghosts, zombie Cyclo-
pes and jolly animals. All the while, full
moons, gravestones and spider webs
swirled vividly around them.
The process of creating the show, wit-
nessed over three of the event’s four days of
rehearsals and taping, was a cross between
old-fashioned Hollywood and cutting-edge
virtual reality.
At a nondescript industrial building in
Glendale, Calif., dancers lounged backstage
waiting for their cues and members of a pro-
duction crew a few dozen strong watched
from a control room. When not thumping
with Balvin’s beats, the soundstage was qui-
et save the whir of an air purifier.
But when the taping started, bright lights
danced across the LED screens on the dia-
mond-shaped stage and two walls behind it,
while monitors displayed those same scenes
enhanced with 3-D animation. The concert
was being created in “XR,” or extended reali-
ty, a blending of real and virtual worlds that
allowed Balvin and his dancers’ in-the-flesh
performances to be augmented by animated
effects.
In another scene, Balvin sang “Que Pre-
tendes” while standing on a giant golden
skeleton palm, another studio illusion. But
he was soon joined by the Puerto Rican star
Bad Bunny, who was not present for Balvin’s
taping but had filmed his appearance in front
of a green screen — a glimpse of humanity
that was actually another wraith. (The Black
Eyed Peas were another virtual guest, for
the song “Ritmo.”)
Balvin, a 35-year-old star from Colombia,
marries sweet and mellow vocals to block-
rocking beats — and he has come to
epitomize a new kind of global pop, appeal-
ing to wide audiences while sticking stead-
fastly to his native Spanish.
He has collaborated with Beyoncé and
Cardi B, and Balvin’s Coachella set last year
gave a taste of the aesthetic he would bring
to Fortnite: dancers in bulbous costumes
bounded around him while giant screens
showed smiling, brightly colored anime
clouds. (His latest album, released in March,
is called “Colores.”) The creative team be-
hind Balvin for Coachella and Fortnite,
Antony Ginandjar and Ashley Evans of the
Squared Division, also choreographed Brit-
ney Spears’s Las Vegas show “Piece of Me.”
Besides Scott, other Fortnite concerts
have featured Marshmello, the D.J. who
wears cartoonish headgear; the producer
Diplo; the rapper and singer Dominic Fike;
and the K-pop sensations BTS. In a phone in-
terview before his second day of rehearsal,
Balvin said he had big ambitions for the set,
his first virtual performance of the pan-
demic.
“I really wanted to be the first Latino to
make this statement,” Balvin said. “Elevate
the culture, elevate the reggaeton move-
ment and elevate my brand as J Balvin, with
such amazing technology.”
Fortnite concerts take place within the
realm of the game, with players’ avatars visi-
ble onscreen as they watch the show taking
place in front of them, like viewers of a drive-
in movie. That layering of realities can be
both disorienting and exhilarating. While I
watched Balvin’s performance, I kept an eye
on my own dancing avatar and occasionally
tracked other characters zipping across my
field of vision. Fake crowd noises were piped
in throughout the show.
Balvin, who described his own Fortnite
gaming habits as voyeuristic — “I basically
just look around, check the vibe” — said he
prepared for his performance by imagining
himself inside Fortnite’s world.
“You’re approaching human beings, ofcourse, but they are in a gamer position;
they have their controller in their hands,” he
said. “For a lot of people it’s going to be their
first reggaeton concert ever, and it’s going to
be through Fortnite, so I have to give it all.”
Throughout the pandemic, musicians —
and tech companies — have scrambled to
find the best platforms to stream concerts as
the live music industry has come to a halt,
abruptly shutting off many artists’ most im-
portant revenue stream.
Instagram, YouTube and the gaming site
Twitch have been crowded with perform-
ances, and a host of companies have at-
tempted to charge money for virtual tickets
and recreate some elements of attending in-
person shows, like preferred seats and artist
meet-and-greets. While many livestreams
began barely above D.I.Y.-level production
quality, innovations have emerged: Erykah
Badu’s series of shows featured a perform-
ance seemingly from inside giant bubbles; a
summer festival took place in Minecraft, an-
other game with a gigantic audience.
Fortnite has come to be seen as an un-
usual but promising outlet. It has 350 million
users, according to Epic Games, the pub-
lisher behind the title, who remain deeply
engaged as they play. The company has de-
voted substantial resources to the concerts,
attempting to make each one a special event.
“Fortnite has become more than a game,”
said Nate Nanzer, the company’s head of
global partnerships.
Epic says it licenses music and pays the
artists a fee for their appearances.
Balvin’s show, like all the game’s perform-
ances, took place in Party Royale, a combat-
free zone within Fortnite’s virtual world. Af-
ter heading there, players briefly roam
through what look like music festival
grounds — passing open fields, a fast-foodrestaurant and a lot of signage — and even-
tually make their way to the stage.
Since the event with Scott, in which a 3-D
version of the rapper was integrated into the
game, the musical appearances on Fortnite
(by BTS, Diplo and others) have been taped
in real life and displayed within the game, as
if through a window between worlds, draw-
ing some fan complaints that the viewing ex-
perience was simply not as engaging. Time
and production resources are part of the rea-
son, as Epic has tried put on shows more fre-
quently.
“What we’re looking to do is create some-
thing that is a little more scalable and repeat-
able,” Nanzer said.
In some ways, the scene in Glendale was
like any film production during the pan-
demic. Everyone on set was given a rapid
Covid-19 test. When Balvin arrived for the
first day of rehearsal he wore a Lakers hat, a
jeans jacket and, like everyone else, a mask.
(Over the summer, Balvin came down with a
case of Covid-19, and said he was nearly hos-
pitalized. “It’s not a game,” he said of the vi-
rus.)
But the set had far more advanced tech-
nology than any standard music-video
shoot. While Balvin and his dancers per-
formed, images moved around them on the
stage and walls, sometimes offering the na-
ked eye only a partial glimpse of the ultimate
shot. Animators in the control room, and
working in postproduction, filled in the 3-D
scenery and Halloween creatures.
On the soundstage, three infrared-
equipped cameras performed their own cho-
reography around Balvin. They work by tri-
angulating their positions against hundreds
of tiny markers on the walls and ceiling.
Each time the director, Shelby Cude,
changed a shot, the floors and walls auto-
matically realigned their display to the cam-
eras’ new perspective.
“Every time the camera changes, it’s like,
Where am I?” said Rudy Garcia, a stand-in
for Balvin during rehearsals.
Balvin eventually got the hang of it. Prac-
ticing how he would appear on top of the
pumpkin, he stood several feet from the edge
of the stage but pretended to teeter, and al-
most topple, over what would be the edge of
the glowing squash.
“I love it!” Balvin said afterward. “It’s
crazy. I feel like I’m in the game. Like I’m in
Fortnite.”EPIC GAMESAn Eye-Popping
Monster Mash
Take a peek behind the scenes of J Balvin’s Halloween concert,
which appeared within the pandemic-safe environs of Fortnite.
By BEN SISARIOTop, how J Balvin’s Halloween concert looked in Fortnite, and, above, a scene from the taping.
Louis Keene contributed reporting. A colorful set, from the tail of Balvin’s dog, center, to the equipment wires, above.