JATO Stage and LED: From Unreal Scenes to a Real Wall
A short production story from the JATO Dynamics conference: how the LED wall content actually became something that worked in a room.
Unreal
Scene build
LED
Wall delivery
Stage
On-site install
THE BRIEF
The big JATO case study covers the full hybrid platform. This is the more backstage bit: how the wall content actually became something that worked in a room.
The visuals were mine: stage concept, Unreal Engine scenes, motion graphics, curated footage and the overall wall language. The physical wall, rigging and signal chain were led by Mitch Jones and the d&b solutions Reading team.
THE APPROACH
That handoff matters. LED wall content is not a JPEG with delusions of grandeur. It has pixel maps, processor quirks, viewing distance, camera behaviour, safe areas and real humans standing in front of it. I supplied content in the formats and ratios the wall actually needed, and the build team fed back limits early enough for me to design around them.
Then the late ask arrived: the CEO wanted moving vehicles lifted out of footage and placed into the Unreal environments, so the vehicles lived inside the brand world instead of their original background.
That kind of request can eat a schedule alive. I kept it practical: cut the shot list down to what the show actually needed, prioritised the hero moments, and ran the rotoscoping in parallel with the rest of the visual finish. While the d&b solutions Reading team kept the wall build moving, I kept the content layer moving.
DELIVERABLES
Project imagery
Live production on site
Stage and screen content
Broadcast and stream setup
Behind the scenesWHAT IT PROVES
By show day, the vehicles sat inside the wall environments, the remote presenters fitted the same stage language, and the room looked like one designed system rather than a pile of clever parts.
The lesson is simple: the content build and the stage build are the same build. Treat them separately and the show starts leaking through the cracks.
