When the rock band Phish began singing their 2004 song “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing” on the Sphere in April, greater than 18,000 fans stared open-mouthed on the Vermont quartet, who appeared to be stuck in the course of a coral reef.
Fish – to not be confused with Phish – swam from one side of the stage to the opposite between giant, pulsating jellyfish as all the dome was transformed right into a trippy underwater experience. Human bodies bobbed up and down within the water between glowing red and green flashes. Tall plants shot up from the ocean floor. The scene was just considered one of dozens of visual effects seen inside and out of doors the glowing $2.3 billion dome in Las Vegas – essentially the most talked-about concert venue on the earth.
The Sphere was designed by James Dolan, who also owns the New York Knicks basketball team. The project aimed to reinvent the concert experience by presenting a live music performance in a 15,000 square meter space with the very best possible LED resolution. Several million dollars were invested within the graphics.
None of the charming visual effects can be possible without Disguise, a London-based technology company that makes a box and complementary software that serves because the brains of the live show. Founded over 20 years ago, Disguise sells its technology to most of the world's most famous musicians, including Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake, in addition to festivals like Coachella.
Disguise is positioning itself at the center of an exploding marketplace for visual graphics at live shows, on film sets and even in churches. Demand for virtual production is predicted to grow from $1.99 billion in 2022 to $7.13 billion by the top of 2029, based on the corporate.
Having conquered the live music market, Disguise is now expanding into live news and sports, in addition to Hollywood productions. For example, the corporate is working with NBC News on election coverage and with Netflix Inc. on shows like Sweet Tooth. The company can be working with the Portland Trailblazers so as to add augmented reality to their basketball broadcasts.
All of this has helped Disguise reach over $100 million in revenue. To get to $200 million, the corporate needs to rent more people. To that end, the corporate is working with investment bank Raine Group to boost money for expansion.
“I need more investment to grow again,” said Disguise CEO Fernando Kufer over dinner at Mother Wolf in Las Vegas, shortly before the Phish show. “We've created a category. We run it. Why not capitalize on it?” he asked.
Disguise began as an art project. In the early 2000s, Matthew Clark, Chris Bird and Ashraf Nehru founded the multidisciplinary studio United Visual Artists, which integrated latest technologies with traditional media in sculptures, performances and installations. The first project was producing the visuals for British electronic group Massive Attack for his or her one hundredth Window tour in 2003, which led to a decades-long collaboration. They later developed software that enabled visuals at live events, often called d3 technologies. The group created pieces for musicians like U2 and the Rolling Stones, Broadway shows like Harry Potter and museums just like the Victoria & Albert. Kufer got here on board in 2015 after years of working for brands like Gillette and The Body Shop. He saw a business with huge untapped potential. At the time, the corporate employed 17 people and had revenue of about $3 million. The founders were torn between an art studio and a technology company. But Kufer knew exactly where to go.
“This is a technology company and we have to run it like one,” Kufer told his partners. He focused the corporate on hardware (the box) and software (technology for creating 3D visuals), renamed it Disguise and started signing contracts with more partners.
Disguise doesn't create the visuals itself — that's done by firms like Walt Disney Co.'s Industrial Light and Magic. The concert halls depend on Disguise to process, play and sequence the varied graphics. Clients pay anywhere from lots of of hundreds to tens of millions of dollars to make use of Disguise's servers, plus additional fees for access to varied software tools. While the server is the inspiration, Disguise sees way more potential within the software business — especially with regard to virtual production and live broadcasting.
CJ ENM, a South Korean entertainment company, is using Disguise technology for its in-house virtual production studio, the VP Stage, for 2D image and video mapping, in addition to virtual and augmented reality. The company plans to make use of the VP Stage to film a wide selection of visual content for every kind of entertainment, from movies to TV series, improvised shows, and commercials.
“Disguise offers unmatched solutions for 2D video and images,” a CJ ENM spokesperson said in an announcement. “For a company like CJ ENM, whose content library spans a wide range of genres and formats, Disguise's solutions are a great fit.”
Financial support
In 2017, Disguise began searching for financial backing. Kufer led a management buyout with the support of Livingbridge, a mid-sized private equity firm based in London. Over the following few years, Kufer grew Disguise's revenue to about $40 million and opened offices in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
Disguise was near closing a serious investment from the Carlyle Group, considered one of the world's largest private equity firms, when Covid-19 shut down live music and productions and reshaped live broadcasts. Disguise lost all of its projects overnight, and there have been moments when Kufer thought the corporate would need to close, he said.
The pandemic also had a silver lining for Disguise: It increased demand for virtual production technology – and gaming. Disguise had already worked with Epic Games Inc., which is best known for the video game Fortnite. Epic's most vital invention, nevertheless, is the Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics software that might be used to develop video games, produce or animate movies, and visualize spaces and products.
Recognizing the potential of Disguise's technology, Epic acquired a 5% minority stake, giving Epic the capital it needed to survive the pandemic and lure Carlyle back to the negotiating table. Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Disguise in 2021.
Everything becomes a cinematic experience, said John McConnell, the graphics producer for the Portland Trailblazers, considered one of only five teams within the NBA that produces all of its own live broadcasts. Working with the team, Disguise developed a temperature tracker that shows whether players are shooting well or not. When players are at their best or playing well, the temperature shoots up. When the team plays poorly, the bar drops and virtual icicles hang from the thermometer.
“Innovations like this are necessary as we compete for viewers,” McConnell said. “Our ownership group has been really focused on making the in-game broadcast the best it can be.”
Disguise's biggest opportunity could also be in Hollywood, where Kufer is moving after 23 years in London. In California, Disguise has signed deals with virtual effects studios to work on dozens of various sound stages, including many who work with Netflix.
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