Facebook Watch · Jesse Collins Entertainment

Forward: The Future of Black Music

A Black History Month broadcast special with John Legend and D Smoke — the house struck and rebuilt as a set, taped with no audience in the room.

Format

Broadcast special

Space

Main Stage

Talent

John Legend D Smoke

Producer

Jesse Collins Entertainment

Produced with Jesse Collins Entertainment for Facebook Watch, Forward turned the auditorium into a stage set: seating struck, risers and truss in, a grand piano centre stage and a full lighting design hung over the proscenium.

It taped closed — cameras on the floor, crew masked, monitors at the back of the house. Everything that slows a shoot down somewhere else was already installed: the truss positions, the console, three-phase power at the back of stage and the fiber to get it out.

The band lit on the rebuilt stage during the taping

Vocalist at the mic with the band behind

Performer mid-take under a single key light

Two artists talking through a take on stage

Trio performing together under warm light

Artists on the blue-lit set between takes

Wide view of the set with the crew working the floor

Cameras framing the performance from the house

The lighting design tested on the empty stage before the shoot

The Miracle name painted on the back wall of the house

Truss, movers and haze over the empty stage

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