November 04, 2023, keyl Liu Cong returned to Changsha, the city where his rap career started, and brought the special performance of "Back to 2000" with 20,000 people to face the 16-year-old self, the spirit, dreams and struggles of the teenager. Absolutely private emotional expression, relatively perceptual time and space processing, "Back to 2000" Changsha special performance has become another aesthetic benchmark for domestic rappers' solo performances. This spaceship is powered by Keyl Liu Cong is at the helm, SUP Music is the host and producer, and the flying fleet has a behind-the-scenes hero from N-APE Studio. Founded in 2016, N-APE Studio is composed of visual artists, interaction engineers, architects and other activists in different fields, and is fully responsible for the overall design and production of the "Back to 2000" special exhibition from the early concept design to the overall design and production of on-site creativity, stage art, lighting and visual. 
Wang Cong (left) and Apu (right), founders of N-APE Studio, we have the honor to talk to the two founders of N-APE Studio, Wang Cong, the chief director of the "Back to 2000" show, and Apu, the visual director, as well as the heads of various parties, to explore the birth of the audiovisual wonder of time and space. 
Back in 2000 is a Chinese rapper keyl Liu Cong's latest personal name is a tribute to the ** era of the Chinese music scene, a nostalgia for youth, and an expectation for the next ** era. As the name of the first 20,000-person performance, it also represents keyl Liu Cong's look back at his rap path. 
*Cover keyl Liu Cong was born in Hengyang, Hunan Province, the country's first large-scale uranium water smelting and purification plant - 272 nuclear plant, and then gradually accumulated thick and thin, becoming a representative of Chinese rap. People say that Liu Cong, who was "produced" from the nuclear plant, became the fuel for the Chinese rap nuclear explosion twenty years later. 
key.Liu Cong is a rapper with strong narrative skills. In this special performance of "Back to 2000", he integrates three personal ** into a complete narrative line: dormant growth between experience and lyricism, introspection and persistence in chaos, from the birth of the 272 nuclear plant to his own rap city-state. Chief director Wang Cong introduced. 
The chief director works on site.
Therefore, this special session will be keyl Liu Cong's extremely personal life experience is distilled into four chapters"The Future Awaits You", "Key to L", "Block Story", "Hey Kong"., unfold the story narration with time clues, and show a three-dimensional and real enough key for the 20,000 homies presentl Liu Cong.
Character clues and chapter settings.
Remake Manuscript and Moodboard
Countless stories of the streets and time and spaceWritten in keyl Liu Cong's lyrics in the melodyHow to flip these personal experiences to the forefront
Concept art for the stage graphic by menslies
Stage presentation. We set the stage direction of a monumental utopia, hoping to prop up this spiritual fortress with so many ideals and stories hidden in it. A tribute to the Fauvist style and brutalist architecture of the mid-20th century: clear structures, single geometric configurations, surreal and spiritually leading. Chief director Wang Cong analyzed.
The overall choreography direction of Wasteland and Brutalism.
Visual rendering. In terms of specific production, I led the visual team to use Cinema4D to complete most of the model construction, Unreal Engine 5 for scene editing, construction, volumetric fog, lighting and shot sequence, etc., and a large number of Octane Render renderers were used to emphasize the CG light and shadow texture. Some tracks, in addition to the dynamic production of the mission model using Cinema4D, also combined with the digital content generated by TouchDesigner to bring more surprise scenes. Apu introduced.
Visual rendering. The opening song "Night Rain", keyl Liu Cong continued to stand on the 7m lifting platform, in the desolate wasteland world, intertwined with the abandoned buildings of the third world, the thunder and lightning behind the buried clouds, and the apocalyptic heavy rain, and finally the impurities of the wasteland began to soar and condensed into a giant waste ball black hole, which was placed in the keyl Behind Liu Cong.
In the production of the opening and ending song "Out of the Nuclear Plant", the visual team took inspiration from the movie "Chernobyl" and designed the "gas mask" mountain as the visual core. The light passes through the dense fog to keyl Liu Cong's logo "keyhole" as a mask of cyborgs as the foreground flashes in the dark. The haze mood of the song is directly conveyed through the thick smoke and color scenes, and the scene in the second half of the track turns to a giant stone hand sticking out of the air, and at the same timel Liu Cong landed from the "Cake Tower", and after meeting with the "Stone Hand", the Stone Hand began to shatter, and the other hand flashed out at the climax of the **, surrounding him, and pushing the emotions of the scene to a climax through the complete story line.
It is also worth mentioning the production of "In the Name of the State", as the opening of the third chapter, the visual team extends under the shape of a giant special-shaped screen, and designs a Soviet-Russian religious building, which is shaped like a square pillar with a spire, gradually shrinking from the bottom to the top, and the façade is layered to build up a direct exposure form, using an exaggerated and heavy concrete texture to pay tribute to brutalism. The visual of the whole repertoire conveys a majestic and solemn momentum by outlining the shape of the building, and finally the sun rises as the climax of the epic.
In order to better the on-site viewing experience and post-recording, our team selected 16 movie cameras and shot in 4K. Combined with the on-site stage and scheduling arrangements, special cameras such as Sky Eye, Steadicam, and aerial photography drones were set up to show the grand occasion of the outdoor station stand concert in an all-round and multi-dimensional way. Xu Yuanzhuo, the head of the photography team Jishuzhai, added.
Xu Yuanzhuo (first from right) and the director take a group photo.
Meiyu high-tech team.
At the same time, it is worth mentioning that considering that the location of the venue is located at the wind sink of the Liuyang River in Changsha Yazui Park, the roof structure is specially made of a hydraulic lifting steel roof with a length of 32m, a depth of 26m, a height of 22m, and a depth of 4m, which can actually bear 60 tons of load at the top and can resist wind resistance up to 8 levels, which effectively guarantees the safety and stability of the entire performance!
The performance site is close to the Liuyang River outlet.
key.l Liu Cong Back to 2000 The Changsha special performance may be a big surprise in the 2023 Chinese rap scene presentation and exploration, but will this surprise be postponed to 2024 and more unknown cities? Let's stay hopeful, after all, the unknown is fascinating. Now, in the intermittent thoughts, again, back to 2000.
More behind the scenes. Presented and produced by: SUP MusicChief Director: Wang Cong**Director: Xiao Qidao Lighting Director: Ye Zhihao Visual Director: Apu 3D Production: Liu Zhenyu FakeVJ Executive: MTZ TR**isStage Group:Zheng Yannan, Wang Wei, Wu Weiwei, Zhuo Jinhua, Ao Bei, Wang Fei, Liu Ting (n-apestudio), Zhang Chi, Wang Xiaofan, Wang Zhenyu, Zang Xiaojing (z&z studio).Audio Group:Zhao Yichan, Huang Jiaming, Tong YanyiArtist costumes:Chen Jiacong, Wang QiugeHardware support:Meiyu high-techFilming Team:Jishu Zhai geekshootjackSound Equipment:Beijing Tianyun Starlight-end-