Grammy winning artists set gold standard for stadium shows with RED Cine‑Broadcast

my interview & words for RED Digital Cinema

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2025 was a banner year for Fuse Technical Group, highlighted by high‑profile projects including 48 dates of Grammy‑winning, multi‑Platinum R&B artist Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl XX Tour 2025 and the record‑setting closing concert of Zach Bryan’s Quittin’ Time Tour in Michigan. Fuse developed a unified technical blueprint that performed seamlessly across both productions, designing and building two custom camera systems to support the shows, which were staged in major stadium venues throughout the United States and Europe.

“Our key differentiator is the ability to reinvent the industry with custom solutions,” says Ben Johnson, project manager for Fuse. “When you call us, you are connecting with the most skilled, creative collection of brain power in the staging industry. RED Cine-Broadcast is our flagship system now. When someone wants our best option, it is RED.”

Johnson notes that Fuse has been receiving a lot of requests over the past few years for a cine-style broadcast solution. “We had tried a couple of systems but they simply were not as seamless as we needed it to be,” he explains. “We wanted a solution that would integrate fluently with our standard touring systems. When Justin Collie, live event production designer at Nimblist, requested a cinema option for Chris Brown around the same time that RED announced their Cine-Broadcast system, the timing worked out perfectly. We didn’t want to go down any other route.”

Fuse designed and built a camera system based around a Ross Ultrix media processing platform and another system around Grass Valley K-Frame. Fuse purchased 17 V-RAPTOR XL cameras with Cine-Broadcast modules and base stations to integrate seamlessly with their infrastructure, which already included 360-degrees of LED screens of ROE Visual CB5 and a Disguise GX3 media server package and all lights, video and rigging for Brown.

“We had multiple RED cameras on the show plus all the SMPTE fiber connectors,” explains Josiah Battles, video director on Brown’s Breezy Bowl XX Tour. “There have definitely been times with other camera products where I’ve not had as much support from the camera company, but RED was different, and I felt very comfortable knowing they were there. They were extremely helpful in prepping the show and I was excited by the final result.”

The camera package comprised two V-RAPTOR for front of house with 24-300 Fujinon Devo zooms; another in the Concourse with a 25-1000 lens; one or two wireless handheld V-RAPTOR on stage with 14-100mm; three cameras mounted on remotely operated dollies (supplied by Luna Remote Systems) and two Tower cams 26ft above the stage also with 24-300 Duos. Battles augmented the REDs with Sony PTZs which he was able to color match by applying a RED LUT.

“The goal was to try to keep the zoom lenses with a focal length between 2.8 and 5.0,” he explains. “We were able to see that shallow depth of field many times during the show and especially when Chris would sing to the Tower cameras.”

Beautifully cinematic sharp foregrounds against blurred backgrounds are only one of the advantages of using larger sensor cine cameras in a broadcast environment.

“The dynamic range step was a big step forward,” Battles says. “Even the design team at front of house, who aren't necessarily video technicians were immediately able to recognize the difference with these cameras. Previously, when Chris was on stage you couldn’t see his face clearly all the time on the IMAGs, especially in the dark. With RED they could. That alone was enough for them to appreciate that what a cine camera can do.”

The Log workflow to capture the extra detail in the bright and dark areas was new to the production team. Shooting Log gives the video files a higher dynamic range than a standard gamma curve. The camera Log files were fed to a central disguise media server and synced with a change in color space to the final Rec.2020 HDR image.

“The biggest draw for Fuse with RED’s Cine-Broadcast system was being able to bring a cinema camera into our established infrastructure of Ross and Grass Valley switchers for remote color grading. All the LUTs are applied in the server so the camera operators don’t need to worry about shading,” Johnson says. “It's definitely a different workflow than a standard broadcast show or even a standard touring show.”

Battles adds, “After that it wasn’t hard to sell them on keeping these cameras at all. Even the lighting designer told me that now he doesn't have to light for the camera as much as before. He can design lighting for the whole show knowing that RED is going to capture all the detail whether in deep contrast or extreme brightness and display that on screen.”

The global shutter of the V-RAPTOR crisply captured all the laser lights and pyrokinetics without the strobing or motion blur familiar to cine cameras with rolling shutter, a prerequisite in live event production.

“Whatever the camera was showing on screen was true to the effect in the venue,” Battles reports. “The lighting team began experimenting with the lasers from show to show, remodeling the refresh rates of the lasers, depending on the kind of look they were going for.

When multi-Platinum, Grammy-winning country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan set the record for the largest ticketed U.S. concert in history last September he did so with 112,408 fans enjoying the full scale, energy, and atmosphere of the historic night in astounding cinematic imaging.

“Their key request was to shoot a cinematic version of the show,” recalls Johnson. “However, they also wanted to minimize the loss of seats which meant we couldn't introduce a whole set of additional cameras. Instead, we converted the touring camera system to a cine-broadcast system. And that's where RED came in.”

The set-up was a spectacular finale to the Quittin’ Time Tour which began in 2023. Fuse was proud to support the milestone event at Michigan’s famed “Big House,” integrating a fleet of RED Digital Cinema V-RAPTOR XL cameras with Cine-Broadcast Modules into a live multi-camera broadcast workflow.

Another exciting creative advantage for artists with RED Cine-Broadcast is the ability to create different looks for songs in their set.

Battles explains, “You can do a black-and-white grade for one song or really enhance the pinks and reds for another or bring down all the contrast in the next. You could even do this verse by verse because all of the looks can be time-coded, programmed and played back via the server. It means the design team has more control over the final look. The look can be more cohesive and the show even more dynamic.”

A challenge with any concert lighting is capturing the true vibrancy of colors like reds and purples in camera. “With RED we can grade the live output in DaVinci Resolve and really bring out those reds and purples for certain songs. Being able to grade is the money right there.”

Many artists also tour with their own content creation team, capturing material for social media. Now, that content can be captured and produced cinematically.

“The content lead for Chris Brown came to me and said he wished we had footage in log so he could grade it,” Battles recalls. “This year, I said that’s possible now that we have our RED workflow. We have hours of 12G Raw footage ready to grade. They also shoot their own behind the scenes footage using KOMODO, shooting Raw for the grade and which goes viral all the time on social media. Now that the RED concert cameras blend with their RED cameras, it boosts the whole overall production of those social media posts.”

The RED Cine-Broadcast Module allows live event and music productions to leverage world class image quality for their shows while slotting seamlessly into standard broadcast workflows. It’s a package that Fuse Technical Group will continue to deliver for artists and venues of the highest caliber.

“RED Cine-Broadcast is the first camera system Fuse has owned that has been able to integrate with SMPTE fiber, the cable stock we've been using for a long time in broadcast and touring,” Johnson concludes. “It’s exciting for us to have an infrastructure that we're already very familiar with alongside a cinema broadcast camera that brings amazing images. We’ve also built flypacks for touring and remote live event work and it was great to be able to integrate RED Cine-Broadcast directly into those. It's flyable. It’s travelable. It’s Go Global. Anywhere.”