Zeekr 7GT Launch, Brussels Motor Show

The challenge

A fixed date, a first look, and a diary full of Christmas

Larry Gale at Sassy+ first got in touch at the start of December. Zeekr was bringing the 7GT to Europe for the first time at the Brussels Motor Show, and the press conference was set for the opening of the show in early January.

A motor show does not move. The car goes under the cover, the press are in the hall at a published time, and the stand opens to the public on the hour whether or not the production is ready. Between the first phone call and that hour sat the festive period, with the people who needed to make decisions away for most of it.

Sassy+ came to us for the production. The whole broadcast side of the launch needed a home: the gallery, the cameras, the graphics and playback, the audio, the delivery, and the crew to run all of it, specified and booked and made to behave as one production on a stand that several other teams were building at the same time.

One of four rehearsals. The cover goes back on and the run starts again.

The approach

Keep it moving, so the client never has to chase it

The useful thing we did in December was not technical. It was staying on it. We kept the specification, the crew and the kit list moving through a period when diaries were thin, so that every time Sassy+ came back to it there was progress to look at rather than a list of things still to decide. By the time everyone was in the same room, the shape of the show was settled and the client knew exactly what they were getting.

That is the part of this job we are proudest of. A launch like this is stressful enough for the people whose brand is on the wall. The production should be the reassuring bit.

One meeting room, seven people, and a hard out

We built the gallery inside the meeting space on the Zeekr stand. That room is Zeekr's own place to sit down with people, press and public alike, anyone who wants to talk about the car or buy one, so the whole rig had to fit around the furniture and the people, and it had to come out again cleanly. Day one was load in and rehearsal. Day two was four full rehearsals, then the live press conference, then a strike that had to be finished before the show floor opened and the room went back to doing its real job.

The gallery on the stand. Programme, preview and every camera on one wall.

Two days out, one more camera position

With two days to go the client asked for a high shot looking down over the car. We put one of the PTZs on a three metre lighting stand, which got the camera up where the shot needed it without taking any more floor space on a stand that had none to give.

Two ways out of the building

The show went out on two encoders running on two independent paths, primary and backup. A motor show press conference happens once, at a published time, in front of the people whose job is to write about it, which is exactly the situation a second path exists for.

The show itself

The press conference opened with a long form film covering the car's specification and the headline messages, played out from our system. A senior Zeekr executive then joined the host on stage for a short interview, the 7GT was revealed, and the two of them walked around and into the car live on camera.

The light in the car

The walk and talk ended with people sitting inside the 7GT, and in rehearsal it became obvious that the interior was reading dark. That shot was on the Ronin 4D, moving with the presenters, so the fix needed to be a lighting one rather than something pulled live on the lens.

We had a small inflatable work light in the kit. It went into the car and sat tucked above the sun visor, invisible from outside, throwing just enough light back onto the faces to make the interior shot work. Four rehearsals is what buys you the chance to find something like that before it matters.

Working alongside everyone else on the stand

A motor show stand at launch is a crowded place, and we were one team of several.

The stand build team had the LED wall and their own audio engineers for the room, and their own mixer driving the wall. Rather than hand them programme, we built them a dedicated feed: the wireless camera scaled down inside a frame, a static logo, or the video playback, which they could take full screen. That let them put the in-car shot up behind the presenters at the moment it mattered, without the wall spending the rest of the show looking at a camera that was looking at the wall.
DiverZe provided the audio package to our specification. Their engineer is our regular A1 and came in with his own kit.
An autoprompt operator was brought in separately, and we integrated the prompt into the show.
The satellite truck, supplied by Sassy+, was on site for press junkets after the conference rather than for the broadcast itself.

Our job, on top of running the show, was to make all of that behave as one production.

Broadcast audio on the stand. Desk and package provided by DiverZe to our spec.

The kit

What it took

Switching	Blackmagic Design ATEM Constellation 8K
Cameras	Sony FX9 on sticks as the main camera, four PTZs placed around the stand, wireless DJI Ronin 4D as the mobile camera
Playback and graphics	vMix
Audio	Broadcast mix, Green-GO comms, presenter IFB, press split box for journalists' own recordings. Spec'd by Production Solutions, provided by DiverZe
Delivery	LiveU Solo and Blackmagic Design encoders, primary and backup on two independent paths, to Castr
Record	Blackmagic Design HyperDeck master
Stand LED wall	Dedicated mixed feed built in our gallery: scaled wireless camera, static logo, or full screen playback, taken by the wall's own mixer
Crew	EIC, vision mixer, graphics operator, A1, three camera operators

vMix driving playback and graphics, a few metres from the car.

The result

The 7GT made its European debut live, on time, to a room full of press, with the feed going out for onward distribution and a press split on the stand so journalists could take clean audio for their own recordings. The gallery was out of the meeting room and the space was back in Zeekr's hands before the public came through the doors.

The wider launch was picked up widely across the European automotive press in the days that followed.

Press conference over, doors about to open.

A launch date does not move. Neither do we.

If you have a product to put in front of the press, in a hall, on a stand, with one chance to get it right, contact us and we will talk it through.