VJ UNION: Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed

From Dhaka to Eurovision Asia: A Bangladeshi VJ’s Dream Come True

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 10:19:12 +0000

Bangladesh stood on a Eurovision stage for the first time, and I got to build the visuals for it.

This is for the people of VJ UNION. On 30 September 2026 I was the VJ at Voice of Bangladesh, the national selection for the first Eurovision Song Contest Asia, and Studio Z made the visuals for all ten songs. I want to tell you how I got there, because I still can't quite believe it.

Where did this dream start?

I grew up in Dhaka. When I was a teenager, almost nobody put backstage footage online. Eurovision did. I watched their production breakdowns, the lighting, the sound, the camera work, like a starving man at a buffet. I couldn't have told you why. I just knew I wanted to be in that room someday.

Back then there was no VJ scene in Bangladesh, and no word for what I wanted to do. So I started with what I had.

What did the road look like?

I started on stage as a band musician in 2003. I moved into event management in 2008, became a VJ in 2011 (the first in Bangladesh, as far as I know), and from 2013 I worked on projection mapping, which was new here.

Year	What happened
2013	Ministry of Sound tour, the first projection mapping in the country
2014	"Velocity", the first LED mapping in Bangladesh, at Ruposhi Bangla Hotel, Dhaka
2015	Rose Garden Palace in Old Dhaka, the first house mapping in the country
2021	Sangsad Bhaban, the National Parliament, the largest building mapping in Bangladesh

Each of those was a first only because nobody here had tried it yet. They took a lot of people who trusted a strange idea.

Since then I've toured with the Nepali band Kandara across Nepal and Thailand and done more than 400 shows at home. A lot of my work also reaches people I never meet. I've supplied visuals for a museum in Qatar and for a touring DJ in Australia, all from my desk in Dhaka. If you need a hand from here, I'm around.

Why did I turn to teaching?

I noticed that for every show I did, there were ten young people in Bangladesh who wanted to learn this and had nowhere to go.

So I put half of my professional life into training and education. I'm an official trainer for Resolume, MadMapper and HeavyM, and the first certified trainer in South Asia for all three. I also wrote the first Bengali book on projection mapping, which came out at the Ekushey Book Fair in 2025.

For years I've been pushing beginners to get to pro level. Two courses came out of that, a MadMapper Masterclass and a Resolume Masterclass Pro, and you can find them at studio-z.ca/all-courses.

What I'm proudest of is not my own shows. It's the professionals this field now has in countries I can't even list.

How did I get the Eurovision job?

Voice of Bangladesh had to meet Eurovision's strict European standard. There is a long guideline behind it, so Bongo hired the best operators in Bangladesh for every department.

I think I was called for three reasons. My portfolio and showreel. The fact that I started live VJing, LED pixel mapping and projection mapping in this country. And one the director told me himself: I'm a musician, and I know a lot of the artists personally.

I was booked about two and a half months before the show, and the full production brief came a month out.

What are the Eurovision rules, and what did they mean for visuals?

Eurovision Asia follows the main contest's rules. A song can run three minutes at most. No more than six performers can be on stage. The lead vocal is live, and everything else is pre-recorded.

For a VJ that shapes everything. With three minutes, a visual idea has to land fast. With six people on stage, the LED wall has to carry what the stage can't. Because only the lead vocal is live, each song's visual was a finished, rendered video, and I kept a bank of live effects on top. And since the world watches through a camera, I set brightness by the camera monitor, not by what the room saw.

How did I start the work?

With a guidebook, like I do on every show. This one had ten competing songs and two guest songs. The guest songs mattered less. The ten were everything.

I listened to each song and broke it down by tone, melody, colour and theme. From that I built a mood board and a colour guide for every song. I showed them to the director first, then to the lighting designer and operator. They had ideas, and I took them in.

Then I met the costume and choreography person. One man handled both, so I worked from his input. Some songs changed completely after that meeting, because his costumes and movement were so strong my visuals had to answer them. In other songs I asked him to move toward my colours. We both listened, and we wanted the same thing, which was to make every act better.

Why do the ten songs look so different from each other?

I asked the director if I could talk to the artists directly, and he said go ahead. So I talked to a good number of them, one by one. Some on WhatsApp, some on the phone, some in person, and a few came to my studio.

I think this is the main reason the ten visuals don't look alike. If Studio Z had designed all ten alone, they might well have come out similar, because the same team made them. Because each artist's ideas went in at the very start, every song set off down its own road.

What did I want from every song?

Bangladesh was on Eurovision's stage for the first time, and the world was watching, mostly Europe. I wasn't going to let anyone look at us and think less of the country.

So the goal wasn't a good show. I wanted each of the ten songs to be the best song, the one that showed Bangladesh at its best.

The pose that became the press photo

Moktadir Dewan, known to everyone as BeatBaksho, is the founder and bass vocal of Beatmosphere. He's my brother in this industry.

I had a pitch for the band. I wanted them to finish their song the way 90s boy bands did, a Backstreet Boys or NSYNC kind of pose, held on the last beat, with their logo on the LED wall behind them. I told them: hold that pose in front of your logo and that's your press photo.

They won, and that was the winning press photo. Here it is as it ran. I'm glad I got to see that pitch win.

What was show day like?

On 30 September 2026, at the International Convention City Bashundhara in Dhaka, Bangladesh picked its first act for Eurovision Song Contest Asia. The room held a little under 2,000 people, and the world watched the stream.

Two shows ran at once. A long production table ran the live broadcast, the web stream and the app stream. In front of it, lighting, sound, visuals and DJ ran the event for the room.

My right hand sat on the master opacity fader most of the night. I watched the camera monitor, not the stage, and rode the LED brightness to what the camera saw.

Beatmosphere won with "Tumi Ele" and goes to Bangkok on 14 November. Pulak Adhikary came second with "Anari Majhi", and Vintage Theory third with "BOOMERANG!".

Who do I want to thank?

Director Wahidul Islam Shuvro, for the trust. Bongo and NTV. DJ Md Wahid. Lighting designers and operators Mohammad Ridwan and Md Yasin. Kawsar Mahmud on sound, and SP Rhythm on audio logistics. Shahinur Parvez for structural design and installation. Green Vision on LED. Raw Xposure on photography. The Eurovision team on site.

And the artists: Beatmosphere, SUBCONSCIOUS, Sharot, Lubaina, Vintage Theory, The Kushiyara Waves and every other act on that stage.

What do I hope you take from this?

Bangladesh is in this community. A country many of you may never have thought of as a VJ country stood on one of the biggest stages in the world, with visuals made at home by people who learned the craft here.

My dream came true, and I got to make my country proud. If you're a young VJ somewhere nobody expects it from, learn the song first. Everything else comes from that. And stay cool and confident, especially when the world is watching.

Questions people ask

Who made the visuals for Voice of Bangladesh?
Studio Z BD made the visual and lighting colour guide and the visuals for all ten competing songs. I designed them and ran them as live VJ.

When and where was it held?
On 30 September 2026 at the International Convention City Bashundhara (ICCB) in Dhaka.

Who won, and what happens next?
Beatmosphere, with "Tumi Ele". They represent Bangladesh at Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok on 14 November 2026.

Was it a live VJ set?
Partly. Each song's visual was a rendered video, with live controls and effects on top.

Who was the first VJ in Bangladesh?
I started live VJing here in 2011, and as far as I know I was the first.

Where can I learn what you teach?
The MadMapper and Resolume masterclasses are at studio-z.ca/all-courses.

How can I reach you?
Write to info@studioz.com.bd.

More on this show: the personal story at zunayed.com/blogs, the production case study at studioz.com.bd/blogs, and the VJ workflow at studio-z.ca/blog.

Projection Mapping, Stacking, and Stitching — What's the Difference?

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:50:04 +0000

Why these three terms get confused

Projection mapping, stacking, and stitching all involve more than one projector or a non-standard surface, so they blur together for people new to the field. They solve different problems, though, and knowing which one you actually need changes your entire setup.

Projection mapping — fitting visuals to a surface's shape

Projection mapping means adjusting your visual content to precisely fit an irregular or non-flat surface — a building facade, a sculpture, a set piece — rather than a flat rectangular screen. It's about geometry: slicing, masking, and warping content so it lines up exactly with the physical shape it's being projected onto.

Stacking — combining projectors for brightness

Stacking means pointing two or more projectors at the exact same surface, aligned on top of each other, to combine their output. The goal isn't more coverage — it's more brightness and richer color, useful when ambient light or a large surface would wash out a single projector's output.

Stitching — combining projectors for coverage

Stitching means placing two or more projectors side by side, each covering a different section of a larger surface, blended together at the seams so the result looks like one continuous image. The goal here is coverage — a surface too wide or too large for any single projector to cover on its own.

How they combine in real shows

These techniques aren't mutually exclusive. A single show might stitch three projectors across a wide stage backdrop, while also stacking two of them on the center section for extra brightness where the audience focus is strongest — all while the content itself is mapped to fit non-flat set pieces within that backdrop.

Quick reference

Projection mapping solves matching content to surface shape — any number of projectors, any position
Stacking solves brightness and color richness — same position, same surface
Stitching solves coverage across a large surface — side by side, blended seams

Learn all three together

These three techniques are taught as one connected skill set — not separately — inside Advanced Outputs & Mapping — Resolume Arena, alongside real multi-display and venue-rider scenarios.

Enroll: Advanced Outputs & Mapping — Resolume Arena — https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/resolume-arena-advanced-outputs-mapping/ (short: tinyurl.com/resolumeMapping)

Multi-Display VJ Rigs 101: Portable 2-Screen to Full Venue Setups

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:00:43 +0000

What counts as a "multi-display rig"?

Any VJ setup where your visuals are split across more than one physical screen or projector, working together as one show. This can be as simple as two portable screens flanking a small stage, or as complex as a full concert rig with six or more projectors and LED processors, all synced to one media server.

Why VJs move from single-display to multi-display

A single screen or projector is the easiest way to start VJing — one output, one canvas, minimal setup. Most VJs move to multi-display for one of a few reasons: a bigger stage that needs coverage from more than one angle, a client or venue that specifically requests it, or simply wanting to offer more visual scale as their bookings grow.

The jump from 1 to 2 displays

This is the biggest conceptual jump, even though it sounds small. With one display, your composition is your canvas. With two, you have to decide: are these two displays showing the same content mirrored, extended as one wide canvas, or independent content entirely? Each choice needs different setup inside your VJ software, and getting screen size and position wrong here is the most common beginner mistake.

What changes at full venue scale

Beyond 2–3 displays, a few things become unavoidable:

Venue riders matter. Projector count, throw distance, and resolution are usually specified by the venue, not chosen freely.
Backup planning matters. With more hardware in play, something is statistically more likely to fail mid-show — a backup output plan stops being optional.
Naming and organization matter. Once you're past 3–4 outputs, an unorganized composition becomes very hard to troubleshoot live.

A realistic path to get there

Nobody starts on a 6-output rig. The realistic path is: get confident on one display, deliberately practice a 2-display setup even if you don't need it yet, then take on multi-display gigs as they come — ideally with structured training behind you rather than figuring out edge blending live at soundcheck for the first time.

Where to go deeper

For VJs ready to move past the basics, Resolume Masterclass PRO covers this entire progression inside Resolume Arena specifically — from single-display fundamentals through full multi-display, DMX-integrated shows.

Start Here: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/resolume-masterclass-pro/

How Many Screens Do You Need? A Beginner's Guide to Multi-Display VJ Rigs

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:33:41 +0000

What counts as a "multi-display rig"?

Why VJs move from single-display to multi-display

The jump from 1 to 2 displays

What changes at full venue scale

Beyond 2–3 displays, a few things become unavoidable:

Venue riders matter. Projector count, throw distance, and resolution are usually specified by the venue, not chosen freely.
Backup planning matters. With more hardware in play, something is statistically more likely to fail mid-show — a backup output plan stops being optional.
Naming and organization matter. Once you're past 3–4 outputs, an unorganized composition becomes very hard to troubleshoot live.

A realistic path to get there

Where to go deeper

Enroll: Resolume Masterclass PRO — https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/resolume-masterclass-pro/ (short: tinyurl.com/resolumePro)

What Producers Should Expect From a Technical Director — And What They Usually Get Instead

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 05:13:16 +0000

WHAT PRODUCERS SHOULD EXPECT FROM A TECHNICAL DIRECTOR — AND WHAT THEY USUALLY GET INSTEAD

By Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Technical Director and Live Show Producer, Dhaka.
Fourteen years, 400+ productions, 20+ international engagements across Nepal, Thailand and Qatar.

Most producers hire a Technical Director too late and then judge the role by the wrong thing.

Too late means during load-in, when the technical plan has already been decided by default. The wrong thing means equipment fluency — asking which consoles someone has operated, rather than whether they can make six vendors execute one show.

This is a working guide to what the role should deliver, written from the inside.

WHAT THE ROLE ACTUALLY OWNS

The Technical Director holds technical authority across the entire production. Every technical department reports into that authority: lighting, LED, audio, camera, crew, visual and content.

The distinction that matters is between authority and operation. A TD does not need to run a console to be accountable for what the console does. In a small production the TD may operate several systems personally. In a large one the TD may touch nothing at all on show night. The responsibility is identical.

What the role does not own — and you should be suspicious of anyone who claims it does — is budget, contracts, ticketing, sponsor obligations and venue operations. That is production and event management. A TD who wants all of it is describing a different job, or has not done this one.

WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE BEFORE THE FIRST TRUCK ARRIVES

If the first substantive technical conversation happens at load-in, you hired late.

A producer should hold, in writing, before load-in:

A defined technical scope, department by department
Individual technical riders issued to each vendor
A stage and venue plan validated against the actual room
A documented visual and lighting language for the show
A technical schedule with freeze dates
A stated procedure for handling changes after freeze
A named decision-maker for conflicts between departments

If you cannot get that list, you do not have a Technical Director. You have a senior technician who will be very busy on the day.

WHY THE RIDER IS THE REAL TEST

A technical rider is not a shopping list. A rider is not a gear list. It is a promise another team can keep.

The test is simple: hand it to a competent production company in a city where nobody knows you, and see whether they can build your show from it without a phone call.

That standard changes how a rider is written. Every line needs a status — required, preferred, not applicable, to be confirmed. Every line needs to survive translation into a different market's equipment inventory. A rider that only works with your usual vendor is not a rider.

On a touring production I direct, the master rider is tagged by show type, so a single document scales from a small club to a stadium without being rewritten for each stop. That structure exists for one reason: touring means handing your show to strangers, repeatedly, and being right about what arrives.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE ARE SIX VENDORS

The TD becomes the translation layer between disciplines that are each optimising correctly for themselves.

Lighting optimises for looks and cue integrity. LED optimises for panel health and processing. Audio optimises for the room. Camera optimises for the broadcast frame. Content optimises for the idea. Choreography optimises for the performer. None of them is wrong. They simply collide.

The collisions are predictable. A camera position that eats a lighting angle. An LED brightness that destroys a projected element. A choreography change that moves a performer outside a lighting state. A late content revision that breaks a timecode.

Somebody has to see those before they happen. That is not a coordination task you can add to a producer who is already carrying the client and the money.

WHAT A PRODUCER SHOULD ASK BEFORE HIRING

What exactly falls inside your technical scope, and what falls outside it?
Which departments and vendors will report to you directly?
What do you need from me before planning can start?
What documents will exist before load-in, and on what dates?
When do technical requirements freeze, and how are changes approved after that?
Who decides when two departments want the same thing?
How do you validate the venue before we are inside it?
What have you personally decided on a show, versus advised on?
Where does your authority end?
What would you refuse to be responsible for?

Question ten is the most informative. Anyone who claims all of it has understood none of it.

HIRING A TECHNICAL DIRECTOR ACROSS BORDERS

Cross-border engagement works when documentation is strong and fails when it is verbal.

A TD arriving in an unfamiliar market cannot rely on knowing the local vendors, the local inventory or the local working culture. What travels is the paperwork — riders, plans, previz, colour guides, show guides — and the ability to run an advance with people you have never met, in a second or third language.

Practically, most of the work happens remotely: scope definition, riders, vendor advance, previz, documentation. The TD arrives in market for technical rehearsal and show. That structure is what makes hiring across borders affordable rather than exotic.

I have run this model into Nepal, Thailand and Qatar, and I am currently taking engagements across the Middle East, Europe and Japan, with return work in Nepal and Thailand.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR, HONESTLY

Breadth over depth. A specialist who is excellent in one discipline and vague about the other five is a department head, not a director.

Evidence of documents. Ask to see a redacted rider or show guide. Anyone doing this properly has them.

A clear account of failure. A TD who has never had a show go wrong has either not done enough shows or is not telling you about them.

Comfort with not being the most visible person in the room. The role does not produce applause. Anyone who needs applause will make bad decisions to get it.

FAQ

When should a Technical Director be hired?
At planning, before equipment is procured and vendors are booked. Every week earlier reduces cost.

Does a Technical Director replace the lighting designer or the VJ?
No. Specialists keep their disciplines. The TD sets the technical relationship between them and holds authority over the result.

Is a Technical Director necessary for corporate events?
Yes, wherever multiple technical vendors are involved. Launches and summits have the same coordination problem as concerts, usually with less rehearsal time.

How does an international Technical Director engagement work?
Planning, documentation and vendor advance remotely; arrival in market for technical rehearsal and show. Local crew and equipment are sourced in market under the TD's specification.

What is the difference between a Technical Director and a technical producer?
Titles vary by market. What matters is the scope agreement in writing, not the label.

I take Technical Direction engagements internationally, currently across the Middle East, Europe, Japan, Nepal and Thailand, alongside work in Bangladesh. Recent engagements include a 26-song tribute production at BICC Dhaka involving six vendor teams and a live holographic segment, and ongoing international touring direction for a Nepali band.

Michael Jackson Hologram, Dhaka 2026: A Technical Director's Account of the Show | MJ Tribute by Warfaze

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:20:28 +0000

Recreating A Childhood 1993 Super Bowl Moment, On Stage

I grew up rewinding the same VHS clip of Michael Jackson's 1993 Super Bowl halftime show more times than I can count. I never imagined I'd get to help bring a piece of that moment back to life — on a stage in Dhaka, using the exact craft I've spent my career building. This is that story: the role, the idea, and the five weeks it took to get there.

By Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed · Technical Director & Producer, Studio Z · Warfaze × Michael Jackson Tribute, 31 July 2026, Hall of Fame, BICC, Dhaka

Tipu Bhai mentioned my name to the agency, and that's how I first heard about this project. The agency already had good chemistry with Studio Z — we'd worked together on other historic Bangla concerts before this one — so it wasn't a hard conversation to have. What made it hard was everything that came after — figuring out how to bring Michael Jackson back to a stage in Dhaka, live, in front of thousands of people, with a fraction of the time and budget the moment I grew up watching once had.

Because that's really what this project was for me. Somewhere under the riders and the colour guides and the load-in schedule was a kid who used to imitate that 1993 Super Bowl entrance in front of a mirror. Twenty-odd years later, immersive production — the craft I now do for a living — gave me a way to help put a version of that moment on a real stage. This post is about three things, in order: the role I held on this show, the idea we built around, and the production that got it from a document to a lit stage in five weeks.

Chapter 01 — The Role

"Technical Director" gets used loosely in this industry, so let me define it the way it actually worked on this show. I owned the technical side of the production — visuals, lighting coordination, LED, sound patching, video, and the choreography-to-content bridge — end to end. Everything else — venue check-in and check-out, vendor payments, contracts, ticketing, sponsor obligations, department scheduling — sat with the event management team. I want to be precise about that split, because it's the whole job description: a technical director doesn't run the event. A technical director makes sure every technical department is speaking the same language about the same show, at the same time, without anyone finding out the hard way that they weren't.

Studio Z was also the production company delivering the visual layer — animated key visual CGI, custom song content for every track, a live VJ set, the media server and its backup, and the holographic segment itself. So on this one I was wearing both hats: producer of my own company's deliverables, and technical director coordinating everyone else's.

Lighting, LED, sound, video and choreography were each run by their own crew, on their own console, in their own vocabulary. My job was to turn "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" into something a lighting desk and a video rig could both execute without a phone call. That turned out to be less about creative direction and more about documentation — which I'll get to in the production chapter, because it's the part of this job nobody sees and the part I'd argue mattered most.

Chapter 02 — The Concept

The idea itself is simple to say and hard to deliver: put Michael Jackson back on a stage, live, for 180 seconds, using a holographic illusion — not a projected backdrop, not a video tribute, an illusion that a room full of people experiences as a live event happening in front of them.

There's exactly one prior reference point worth naming. On 18 May 2014, at the Billboard Music Awards in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a Michael Jackson illusion performed "Slave to the Rhythm" — sixteen live dancers, a full band, directed by Jamie King, backed by the Michael Jackson Estate, built over nearly six months. It's still one of the most talked-about stage illusions ever produced, and it's the honest comparison point for what we did in Dhaka twelve years later.

The scale wasn't comparable. The idea was.

Las Vegas 2014: Hollywood director, the artist's own Estate, six months of build time.

Dhaka 2026: a small studio, a locked lighting cue, and five weeks.

Here's the part people don't expect: a holographic illusion isn't a visual effect. It's a light agreement. For those 180 seconds to hold, the lighting console has to sit in an exact state — no follow spots wandering into the frame. Camera operators have to respect a boundary that isn't marked anywhere on the floor. The dancer has to stay inside a line that exists only in a rehearsal note. The audio cue has to land on the frame, not near it. Every department gives something up so the illusion can hold. None of that shows on stage. What shows is a legend's most recognisable gestures happening again, live, in a room that wasn't told to expect it.

"Most of what people assume is a budget problem is actually a rehearsal problem."
— on comparing Vegas 2014 to Dhaka 2026

The concept also had to survive a moving setlist. The MJ set started as a 19-song bank. By the time the band locked it — five days before the show — it had become 16 songs, with three additions that had never appeared in any earlier version at all: Human Nature, The Way You Make Me Feel, and We Are the World. Those three entered with zero prepared content, zero locked palette, zero choreography note. Building a concept that can absorb that kind of change five days out is its own discipline, and it's the bridge into the next chapter.

180s — the illusion · 16 — MJ songs, final · Thousands — people in the room, venue full · 5 — weeks, concept to stage

Chapter 03 — The Production

If the concept is the idea, production is everything that has to be true before the idea is allowed on stage. On this show that meant building a documentation pipeline that six different departments could all read from without ever needing to ask each other a clarifying question.

Building the illusion in 3D before it existed anywhere else

Before any of it touched a stage, it existed as a full 3D previsualisation of the Hall of Fame venue — LED wall, truss positions, fixture throw, runway, audience geometry — and, separately, as a 3D model of Michael Jackson built and refined inside our editing software for the holographic content itself. That model is where costume, silhouette, and movement got tested and approved before a single frame went to render. Previz isn't there to produce a pretty image. It's there to settle arguments before they happen on a load-in day, when settling them costs money and time nobody has.

The shoot: greenscreen, a dancer, and one chance to get the reference right

The holographic content itself was shot on a dedicated greenscreen stage, with the choreography team handling both the movement for the MJ set and the holographic content shoot as one continuous process — no handoff gap between the person setting the movement and the person capturing it. Every gesture that later reads as "Michael Jackson, live" on stage in Dhaka was blocked, rehearsed, and shot here first — matched frame by frame against the 3D reference model built in our editing software, where costume, silhouette, and movement got approved before a single frame went to render.

The build behind the illusion — the greenscreen shoot and the 3D reference model, side by side.

Documentation as the actual deliverable

Here's what most people never see, and what I'd argue was the most important thing built on this entire project: a stack of documents, in order, none of them creative.

Technical riders per department, distributed 11 July.
A costume reference — desktop, mobile, and printable editions.
A VJ & Lighting Colour Guide, through three revisions, giving the lighting console and the video rig the same locked palette for every song.
A choreography guide for the dance team, with unconfirmed slots explicitly flagged rather than left blank.
Final visual notes covering fresh research for the five songs added late.
An all-party technical briefing, 28 July.
One consolidated Show Guide Book, 30 July — so nobody was opening six separate files on show day.

A colour palette is a contract. It's the difference between telling a lighting engineer "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" and handing him a value his console can execute — the same value the video rig is reading at the same moment. That's not creative direction. That's translation, and it's what actually keeps six departments in sync across a five-week build.

The timeline

Late June: early setlist notes and colour guide v1. Early July: riders begin. 11 July: riders distributed. 22 July: riders confirmed, colour guide at v3. 26 July: setlist locked — in two separate meetings, one for the MJ set, one for Warfaze's own. 28 July: the all-party briefing. 30 July: the Show Guide Book goes out. 31 July: the show.

Chapter 04 — The Night Itself

The illusion ran. Michael appeared, live, on a holographic screen, in the exact costume from his 1993 Super Bowl performance — the same costume from the same clip I used to rewind as a kid — then multiplied into several figures moving in the same choreography, then vanished into a single spotlight where a real performer, Michael Imran, stood exactly where the hologram had been. Standing at the console watching that costume appear was, honestly, a strange full-circle moment for me. Channel 24 covered it that night. Their headline, translated, said it plainly: it was as if Michael Jackson had returned to the Warfaze stage. Reading that the next morning meant more to me than most reviews I've had.

Show night.

What I Took From This One

Documentation is the deliverable. The Show Guide Book was the most important thing produced on this project, and it contains no creative work at all.
A colour palette is a contract. It turns a feeling into a value two different consoles can execute without a phone call.
Scale is not the same as ambition. Las Vegas had six months and an Estate behind it. Dhaka had a small team and a locked cue. The idea travelled anyway.
A holographic illusion is a light agreement, not a visual effect. Every department gives something up so 180 seconds can hold.
Some projects are personal before they're professional. I've built plenty of shows. This one happened to sit on top of a childhood memory, and that changed how much it mattered to get right.

Questions People Ask

What does a technical director actually do on a concert like this?
Owns the technical side of the show — lighting coordination, LED, sound patching, video, and content — end to end, translating a creative brief into specifications every department's console can execute in sync. Operations, finance, and venue logistics sit separately with the event management team.

Was the Michael Jackson segment a real hologram?
It was a live holographic illusion — a real-time technique that placed a holographic Michael Jackson on stage in front of the audience, distinct from pre-recorded video or a body double alone.

How does this compare to Michael Jackson's 2014 Las Vegas hologram?
The 2014 Billboard Music Awards illusion was built over roughly six months by a Hollywood team backed by the Michael Jackson Estate. The 2026 Dhaka illusion was designed and delivered by a small studio at a fraction of the scale and budget, in about five weeks — the same core idea, arriving in Bangladesh for the first time.

Who performed as Michael Jackson?
Michael Imran, previously featured as Michael Jackson on Ityadi, Bangladesh's longest-running television magazine programme, and in the Jump Keds television commercial.

Building A Show Like This

If your next project needs a technical director who thinks in documentation as much as in light — riders, colour guides, previz, and a single show guide book that keeps every department honest — let's talk.

Get In Touch

How to Learn MadMapper 6 From Scratch: The Honest Beginner's Roadmap

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:03:50 +0000

In 2014, Michael Jackson walked back onto a stage in Las Vegas, five years after his death. Gold jacket, red trousers, sixteen live dancers, a live band. The Billboard Music Awards, MGM Grand Garden Arena. It took nearly six months to build, a Hollywood production team, and the full backing of the Michael Jackson Estate. For a few minutes, an audience stopped being sure what it was looking at.

Twelve years later, I sat in Dhaka with a setlist, a three-person team, and a question: can we bring that idea here — not the budget, not the Estate, not the six months — just the idea?

On 31 July 2026, at a 2,500-capacity venue in Dhaka, we did. A 180-second live holographic illusion, performed in real time in the room. The first time it's been done on a concert stage in Bangladesh.

This is the story of how, and what it teaches anyone trying to pull off something similar without a Vegas budget.

THE BRIEF

The show was a Michael Jackson tribute performed by Warfaze — Bangladesh's most influential heavy metal band, 42 years into their career, playing MJ's catalogue for two hours before switching into their own material for a third. The event was organized under Brandmyth Limited & Mars & Co., who ran the commercial and operational side — venue, contracts, ticketing, sponsor obligations. I was brought in as Technical Director, responsible for everything on the technical side: lighting, LED, sound coordination, camera, choreography timing, and the visual content — including a holographic segment nobody in this market had attempted at this scale before.

I didn't pitch for the job. The band's leader recommended me directly, and the agency already knew my work from earlier projects. That meant I walked in without having to prove I belonged in the room — which let me spend the actual runway on the hard problem instead of the easy one.

The hard problem was this: Michael Jackson's music is built on dense studio production — layers of synth, almost no guitar — and it had to be reshaped into a rock band's voice while still being unmistakably him. That tension had to show up in every layer I controlled: light, image, motion, timing.

WHY A HOLOGRAM, AND WHY IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

Everyone assumes a holographic illusion is a visual effect — something you build once and drop into a show. It isn't. It's an agreement between departments.

A hologram illusion of this kind only exists inside one exact lighting condition. Break that condition for even a second and the illusion collapses. Which means for those 180 seconds, every other department has to give something up simultaneously:

The lighting console has to hit an exact state and hold it — no adjustments, no reactive cues.
Follow spot operators have to not do the thing follow spot operators instinctively do.
The camera team has to know precisely where they can and cannot stand.
Choreography has to keep performers inside a boundary the audience can't see but the optics can't forgive.
The audio cue has to land exactly on the frame, not near it.

None of that happens by accident on the night. It has to exist on paper — in the technical riders, the cue sheet, the choreography notes — a month before it exists on a stage. By the time we got to load-in, that 180-second window had already been negotiated, in writing, by six departments who had never worked together before.

That's the actual skill in delivering a moment like this. Not the hologram hardware. The choreography of restraint across an entire production team.

BUILDING THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM EXISTS

Previsualization is how you find out a follow spot is blocked, or a projector throw clips a truss, or a performer's entry path crosses a cable run — in a file, weeks out, instead of on load-in day with seven crews standing around waiting for you to solve it live.

When the lighting engineer, the LED engineer, and the choreographer are all looking at the same 3D frame, the conversation stops being an opinion and starts being a fact everyone can see.

THE DOCUMENT THAT DID THE ACTUAL WORK

If you asked me what technical direction looks like on paper, I'd point to one document: a locked, per-song colour guide, built across three revisions, used simultaneously by the lighting console and the video system.

It sounds unglamorous. It's the reason the show worked. Instead of two departments guessing what "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" means in the room, in real time, under pressure — they had a value they'd already agreed on a month earlier. A colour palette, in writing, is a contract. It turns a subjective creative instruction into something two separate operators can execute independently and still land in the same place.

Everything else — the tech riders, the choreography guide, the final consolidated show reference built the night before the event — existed to do the same job: make sure "ready" meant the same thing to every department in the building.

WHAT I LEARNED

Scale is not the same as ambition. Las Vegas had six months and an estate behind it. We had a small team and a locked lighting cue. The idea traveled anyway. Most of what people assume is a budget problem is actually a rehearsal and documentation problem.

Documentation is the deliverable. Nobody aligns six departments because you're persuasive in a meeting. They align because there's a specific, dated document and everyone has read the same sentence.

A holographic illusion is a discipline problem before it's a technology problem. The gear is the easy part. Getting five other departments to give something up, in perfect sync, for three minutes — that's the job.

If the idea is strong enough, the market doesn't matter. Nobody had put a live hologram on a concert stage in Bangladesh. That wasn't a reason to avoid it. It was the reason to do it.

FAQ

What does a technical director actually do on a show like this?
A technical director is the single point of accountability for the technical output of a live show — making sure lighting, LED, sound, camera, choreography, and visual content all execute against the same cues, in the same room, with no second take. It's distinct from creative direction and separate from production management, which typically handles budgets, venue, and logistics.

What is a live holographic illusion, technically speaking?
It's a stage illusion created through a precise combination of projection, lighting control, and screen technology that creates the impression of a three-dimensional figure performing live. It depends entirely on a controlled lighting environment — if any other light source breaks that condition, the illusion fails.

Who was the technical director behind this?
Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed, a technical director and VJ based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally on concerts, holographic productions, and large-scale AV shows. This production was organized in partnership with Brandmyth Limited & Mars & Co.

Has a live hologram been done on a concert stage in Bangladesh before?
No — this was the first time. Michael Jackson's own hologram debut was in 2014 at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, backed by a six-month production timeline and the Michael Jackson Estate.

Can this be done on a smaller budget than a Vegas-scale production?
Yes. The core requirement isn't budget — it's discipline. Previsualization, a locked cue structure, and a documentation chain that every department actually reads are what make an illusion like this reliable, regardless of production scale.

If you're planning a show that needs this level of technical coordination — a concert, a product launch, a brand activation — anywhere in the world, this is the kind of problem I like being handed.

Written by Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Technical Director & VJ, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally.

MJ came back from the dead again in 2026 — this time in Dhaka. Here's how we pulled it off.

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:28:33 +0000

Twelve years later, I sat in Dhaka with a setlist, a three-person team, and a question: can we bring that idea here — not the budget, not the Estate, not the six months — just the idea?

This is the story of how, and what it teaches anyone trying to pull off something similar without a Vegas budget.

THE BRIEF

WHY A HOLOGRAM, AND WHY IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

Everyone assumes a holographic illusion is a visual effect — something you build once and drop into a show. It isn't. It's an agreement between departments.

That's the actual skill in delivering a moment like this. Not the hologram hardware. The choreography of restraint across an entire production team.

BUILDING THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM EXISTS

Before a single truss went up, the entire stage existed in 3D — LED wall, truss and fixture positions, sightlines, the light throw, the audience geometry. Not for a nice render. For settling arguments before they happened on the floor.

Previsualization is how you find out a follow spot is blocked, or a projector throw clips a truss, or a performer's entry path crosses a cable run — in a file, weeks out, instead of on load-in day with seven crews standing around waiting for you to solve it live.

When the lighting engineer, the LED engineer, and the choreographer are all looking at the same 3D frame, the conversation stops being an opinion and starts being a fact everyone can see.

THE DOCUMENT THAT DID THE ACTUAL WORK

WHAT I LEARNED

Documentation is the deliverable. Nobody aligns six departments because you're persuasive in a meeting. They align because there's a specific, dated document and everyone has read the same sentence.

If the idea is strong enough, the market doesn't matter. Nobody had put a live hologram on a concert stage in Bangladesh. That wasn't a reason to avoid it. It was the reason to do it.

FAQ

Written by Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Technical Director & VJ, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally.

MadMapper 6 Masterclass — Full Course Overview (Free Preview)

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:28:23 +0000

If you've ever wanted to get into projection mapping but didn't know where to start, this one's for you. Below is the first chapter of my MadMapper 6 Masterclass — a full walkthrough of everything the course covers, from your very first mapped surface to a complete timeline-based show running projection, LED, DMX lighting, and lasers together.

What this masterclass actually covers

MadMapper started as a projection mapping tool, but it's grown into something bigger — a full visual mapping platform that can convert visuals to projectors, lights, and lasers alike. This course is built to give you a fresh, MadMapper 6-specific foundation, step by step, with no assumed prior experience.

Across 22 chapters and 5+ hours, you'll go from the fundamentals all the way to a real, production-grade workflow:

Projection mapping fundamentals and hardware requirements
Installing and setting up MadMapper 6, and a full interface tour
Output panels and connecting external displays, lights, and lasers
Drawing surfaces, masks, and groups for your first projection mapping
Adding a second projector for advanced geometric mapping
Building scenes, cues, and your first timeline
Controlling MadMapper with MIDI controllers and live audio input
Adding a TV for seamless visuals that flow from screen to projection
Basic DMX lighting and laser mapping
Space Scanner, to save serious setup time
Combining everything into one complete timeline show
Best practices to get clean, optimized output from every project

Who this is for

Whether you're an aspiring projection mapping artist, an event designer looking to add mapping to your toolkit, an AV technician moving into media servers, a lighting/LED programmer wanting to integrate DMX with visuals, or a show producer building structured timeline-based productions — this course is built to take you from zero to confident.

About the course

MadMapper 6 Masterclass | Beginner to Intermediate is a self-paced online course including the full video training, practical tasks, and downloadable example projects. Taught by me, Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — I've been working with MadMapper for over 14 years, producing everything from small installations to national-grade productions, and this course is my attempt to give MadMapper 6 the fresh, dedicated walkthrough it deserves.

Enroll in the full MadMapper 6 Masterclass: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/madmapper-6-masterclass-beginner-to-intermediate/

MadMapper 6 Masterclass Review: Is It Worth $349?

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 05:46:42 +0000

MadMapper 6 Masterclass Review: Is It Worth $349?

I am reviewing my own course. I know how that looks. But after fourteen years with MadMapper, hundreds of one-on-one teaching sessions, and watching this community grow — I think I am exactly the right person to tell you honestly what this course is, who it is built for, and whether the price makes sense for you specifically.

Is the MadMapper 6 Masterclass worth $349? The honest answer is: it depends on who you are.

Why I Built It

I have been teaching MadMapper in one-on-one sessions for years. In nearly every session I found the same thing. 99 percent of students had never found a structured step-by-step learning base. They had watched YouTube videos. Read forum posts. They could do some things confidently and had terrifying gaps in others. MadMapper has good content on YouTube but it is topic-specific and not sequential. And most of it was made on MadMapper 3 or MM4. Version 6 has a fundamentally different interface and a completely rebuilt timeline. Learning on old tutorials and then opening MM6 is disorienting at best.

I wanted to bring more professionals and serious hobbyists into the full world of mapping — not just projection but everything. Projection, LED, lights, laser, the whole thing. That is what a masterclass means. Everything you need to become a master.

What Is Inside

22 chapters. Just over five hours of video. Downloadable example projects and practical tasks throughout. Lifetime access.

The course moves through four phases: foundation covering hardware, install, and interface; core mapping covering surfaces, media, geometry, masks, and groups; show building covering multi-projector output, scenes, cues, timeline, external controls, and live inputs; and specialized outputs covering Space Scanner, LED, DMX, laser, Timeline Level 2, and troubleshooting.

The final chapter is nearly an hour on its own. We build a complete timeline-based show from scratch — recapping everything from the course and putting it together into a real deliverable. That is where the learning consolidates.

The Chapter That Will Surprise You

The stitching and stacking chapter. These are the two essential paths for working with multi-projector installations and I have never seen them explained anywhere near as clearly as in this chapter. There is no proper YouTube video that covers this the way this chapter does. If you are planning multi-projector work — and at professional scale you will be — this chapter alone justifies serious attention.

What I Left Out and Why

Advanced functions are not covered in depth. Some are on YouTube. The rest I cover in one-on-one sessions. I made this deliberate call because the course is beginner to intermediate and overloading it with advanced material would bury the foundation. Get the foundation right. The advanced skills build naturally on top.

Is $349 Too Much?

If you are a professional or serious about becoming one — no. You are gaining a skill that pays well in this economy. 22 chapters, five-plus hours of video, example projects, lifetime access. You know what that means in terms of actual learning hours and practical value.

If you are a serious hobbyist who genuinely wants to understand how this all works and not just dabble — also no. You will use this course for years. Lifetime access means you come back to it every time you level up.

If you are casually curious and not sure whether mapping is something you want to pursue — watch the introduction video first. It summarizes everything the course delivers. If you look at what I show in that video and want that knowledge, buy it. If not, that is a fair and honest answer for yourself before spending anything.

Who It Is For

Aspiring mappers starting from zero. Event designers and installation creators adding mapping to their toolkit. AV technicians expanding into media server and mapping workflows. LED and lighting programmers wanting to integrate visual mapping with DMX and display systems. Live show producers who want to build structured timeline-based shows professionally.

When I built this course I pictured someone enthusiastic, craving to gather mapping knowledge, willing to be taught step by step with real examples. If that is you, this course was built for you.

What Backs This Up

I am a certified MadMapper trainer recognized directly by MadMapper. That is not a self-assigned title. It is verifiable on MadMapper's official website. Fourteen years. 400-plus shows. 20-plus international productions. That is the experience behind every chapter.

The fragments approach — YouTube, forums, trial and error — works. I lived it. But it always leaves gaps and those gaps show up at the worst possible moments. This course fills them in the right order from someone who has already made every mistake so you do not have to. That is what $349 buys.

Get Started: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/madmapper-6-masterclass-beginner-to-intermediate/

A Concert Technical Breakdown You Don't Wanna Miss — Kandara x Nova x StudioZ.bd | Nepal

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:53:53 +0000

A folk pop band walks into a futuristic EDM nightclub — and somehow, it works. In this video I'm breaking down every technical layer of the Kandara show at Nova, Kathmandu. We're talking LED pixel mapping, BPM-synced chasers and pulse effects, kinetic lift timing, and a dual-PC setup with Resolume and MadMapper running the whole visual engine. Even the outliner effects were song-mapped and cue-ready — this is what intentional VJ content looks like in a real live show environment.

All the visuals were built from scratch — no stock loops, no shortcuts. We used After Effects, Firefly, and Gemini to build song-wise content, including a multi-camera 3D intro that made the entire venue feel like it was moving. If you live that VJ life, work in live show production, or just love seeing how a real concert comes together behind the scenes — this breakdown is exactly for you. Chasers, pulse, outliners, kinetic lifts — everything synced, everything purposeful. This is what immersive visual production actually looks like in the wild.

My Rig : https://studio-z.ca/my-rig2/

Recommended VJ kit 2026 : https://studio-z.ca/recommended-vj-kit-2026/

If you like my teaching style and think I can bring value to your project —
📩 feel free to reach out, we’ll talk.
✔ https://zunayed.com/book-me/

About Kandara:
For over 32 years, Kandara has been one of Nepal's most beloved bands —
weaving folk traditions, mountain soul, and contemporary sound into music
that generations of Nepalis call their own. Their songs don't just play —
they live in people's memories, festivals, and homes.
🌐 www.kandaraband.com
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Kandara Band Members:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Bivek Shrestha — Founding Chairperson & Lead Vocalist
Sunil Thapa — Co-Founder & Drummer
Avinash Gayak — Madalist / Percussionist
Pankaj Jha — Bassist
Sandesh Muzo — Guitarist
Neil Ghatani — Keyboardist
Simon Tajhya — Sound Engineer
Nabin Thapa — Technical Specialist
Special thanks to Nabin Works
─────────────────────────────
🎵 Band: Kandara, Nepal
📍 Venue: Club Nova, Thamel, Kathmandu
⚡ Production: Studio Z BD, Bangladesh
🗓️ Show Date: April 10, 2026
─────────────────────────────

🔔 Subscribe for VJ tutorials, projection mapping & real event productions:
https://www.youtube.com/@ZunayedSabbirAhmed

🛒 Courses & resources: https://studio-z.ca/shop/
🌐 Work with us: https://studioz.com.bd
─────────────────────────────
🛒Our Shop : https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/resolume-masterclass-from-beginner-to-intermediate/

🔹Get Start as VJ! : https://tinyurl.com/Start-VJing

🔹Get Started with Camera! : https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/working-with-camera-inside-resolume-arena/

🔹10% DISCOUNT here 🔻
Join VJ chat group with Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed :

https://chat.whatsapp.com/ByxKr1TE9aQ0SbjJXHiIM2?mode=r_c

🔹BOOK one-to-one or one-to-team trainings!

VJ Therapy- https://forms.gle/xUdm9yZ91VbtD9yv9

www.zunayed.com

✅Follow Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/ZSAglobal
Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/ZunayedSabbirAhmed
Instagram- http://www.instagram.com/zsabbir
Youtube- http://www.youtube.com/zunayedsabbirahmed
StudioZ- http://www.studioz.com.bd

Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/zsabbir

✅Follow Studio Z

StudioZ Official Website: https://www.studioz.com.bd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/studiozz
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studioz_bd #studioz

Previous release of this series- https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2gtzqq_ULF6x_Z_sEaBlayyD1gE0Hoka

Script, Idea- Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed
AV Production- Ariful Islam Bappi

KandaraBand #VJBreakdown #Resolume #MadMapper #LEDPixelMapping #ConcertVisuals #NepalConcert #StudioZbd #VideoMapping #LiveShowProduction

MadMapper 6 vs Older Versions: What Actually Changed and Why It Matters

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:59:47 +0000

MadMapper 6 vs Older Versions: What Actually Changed and Why It Matters

I have been using MadMapper since around 2012. I watched it grow through every version — incremental updates, occasional bigger jumps, and then version 6, which landed differently. I did not expect to stop the way I did. But when I saw what they did to the timeline, my workflow changed.

If you are sitting on an older version trying to decide whether to upgrade, or if you are new and trying to understand what MM6 actually means — here is my honest take.

MadMapper Grew Up. And So Did I.

MadMapper grew up over the past fourteen or fifteen years like I did. I am more controlled, more matured, more intelligent, more capable than I was in 2012. So is MadMapper. Version 6 is not just a newer release. It is a software that has genuinely evolved into something more serious, more structured, and more powerful than what came before it.

There are three specific areas where MM6 changed things that matter in real show environments.

The Interface Was Redesigned

If you are moving from MM4 or MM5, expect things to have moved. The output panel, surface controls, media browser — the layout was restructured. For someone learning fresh this does not matter. For someone coming from an older version, the first couple of hours will feel disorienting until things click back into place.

The redesign was not cosmetic. The organization reflects a cleaner separation of concerns. Outputs, surfaces, media, cues — each live in more logical places now. Once you understand the new structure, the workflow is faster. But the transition needs intention. Do not assume you can open MM6 and everything will be where you left it.

The Rendering Engine Got a Real Upgrade

Performance matters at show scale. The engine upgrade in version 6 is noticeable in complex projects — multi-projector setups, LED display processing, anything with heavy media throughput. I will not give benchmark numbers because every system is different. What I will say is that MM6 handles workloads that earlier versions struggled with. For small installs the difference is minimal. For large-scale productions it is real and it matters.

The Timeline — This Is the One That Changed Everything

When MM6 dropped, the timeline was what stopped me. It completely rewired how I think about show programming.

In older versions, timeline was functional but limited. In MM6 it became the backbone of structured show programming — with a level of control over scenes, cues, and multi-output sequencing that simply did not exist before. The conductor and keyframe editing features look small on paper. Inside a real show environment they are enormous. They give you precision over timing and transitions that previously required external automation or workarounds.

If you are still on MadMapper 5, the timeline alone is the reason to move. Not because MM5 is broken. Because what you can build in MM6's timeline is a different category of show.

What About Those Old Courses on Udemy?

There are MadMapper courses online — mostly on Udemy — built on versions 3 and 4. Check the publish dates and you will understand quickly how old they are. The fundamental concepts carry across versions, but the interface, the workflow, and especially the timeline in MM6 are different enough that older material will mislead you in practical moments.

The MadMapper 6 Masterclass is built on version 6 from the ground up. Every chapter reflects the current interface, the current workflow, and the current capabilities of the software. It works for complete beginners and for experienced mappers who want a clean re-entry into MM6 without fighting outdated reference material.

I am a certified MadMapper trainer, recognized directly by MadMapper. If you want to go deeper on what MM6 offers and how to build with it properly, that is what the Masterclass is for.

Get Started: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/madmapper-6-masterclass-beginner-to-intermediate/