Backed by four Victoires de la Musique awards for her album Méga BBL, Franco-Congolese artist Theodora launched her first large-scale live production in spring 2026: the Free Kitty tour, spanning 12 arena shows across France and Belgium, with consistently sold-out dates.
At the heart of this production: a bold theatrical scenic concept built around a pink house whose walls, surfaces and central element are made entirely of video screens.
To manage the full video system across the tour, the production brought in Célestin Soum, founder of Saturn Studio, who ran SMODE in a unique dual configuration - handling both media server output and live directing on his own.
Backed by four Victoires de la Musique awards for her album Méga BBL, Franco-Congolese artist Theodora launched her first large-scale live production in spring 2026: the Free Kitty tour, spanning 12 arena shows across France and Belgium, with consistently sold-out dates.
At the heart of this production: a bold theatrical scenic concept built around a pink house whose walls, surfaces and central element are made entirely of video screens.
To manage the full video system across the tour, the production brought in Célestin Soum, founder of Saturn Studio, who ran SMODE in a unique dual configuration - handling both media server output and live directing on his own.
This project is built on a radical premise: the entire set is made of video screens. Achieving perfect uniformity across all surfaces was therefore an absolute requirement.
The central LED tower forms the backbone of the setup:
This project is built on a radical premise: the entire set is made of video screens. Achieving perfect uniformity across all surfaces was therefore an absolute requirement.
The central LED tower forms the backbone of the setup:
On either side, two LED structures recreating storefronts:
IMAG LED screen: 5.5 m x 3.5 m upstage, designed to evoke urban advertising billboards
Control system: 1 SMODE media server (+ 1 spare) - NVIDIA RTX A6000 ADA 48 GB VRAM - handling LED outputs, confidence monitors and NDI distribution
All LED panels and the two X-REAL racks hosting SMODE were supplied by Alabama Média (Groupe Novelty).
On either side, two LED structures recreating storefronts:
IMAG LED screen: 5.5 m x 3.5 m upstage, designed to evoke urban advertising billboards
Control system: 1 SMODE media server (+ 1 spare) - NVIDIA RTX A6000 ADA 48 GB VRAM - handling LED outputs, confidence monitors and NDI distribution
All LED panels and the two X-REAL racks hosting SMODE were supplied by Alabama Média (Groupe Novelty).
"SMODE truly made it possible to manage a workload that would simply have been impossible for a single person otherwise."
"SMODE truly made it possible to manage a workload that would simply have been impossible for a single person otherwise."
SMODE handled the main video output to all LED screens while simultaneously serving as a live production monitor for Célestin Soum. Two return feeds, distributed across around ten screens around the stage and backstage, provided him with all the real-time information needed to run the show: next track, performer positions, timecode, and feeds from the nine cameras available in the video mixer. An integrated source selector managed the information displayed on each screen. An NDI feed was also available for the lighting team, enabling real-time pixel-mapping into their rig.
Rather than importing pre-finalised content, Célestin assembled and edited all media directly inside SMODE, giving him full flexibility to rework material at any point during the residency and tour. When one track was performed a cappella, he was able to simplify the video edit on the fly, without requesting new content from Mathematic Studio.
SMODE handled the main video output to all LED screens while simultaneously serving as a live production monitor for Célestin Soum. Two return feeds, distributed across around ten screens around the stage and backstage, provided him with all the real-time information needed to run the show: next track, performer positions, timecode, and feeds from the nine cameras available in the video mixer. An integrated source selector managed the information displayed on each screen. An NDI feed was also available for the lighting team, enabling real-time pixel-mapping into their rig.
Rather than importing pre-finalised content, Célestin assembled and edited all media directly inside SMODE, giving him full flexibility to rework material at any point during the residency and tour. When one track was performed a cappella, he was able to simplify the video edit on the fly, without requesting new content from Mathematic Studio.
BPM synchronisation via SMODE's tempo tool locked video loops to the tempo of each track. Working to a shared methodology with Mathematic Studio, all video content was produced in durations of 4, 8 or 16 seconds, with each second corresponding to one musical beat at the correct BPM. The composition timeline also enabled precise processing of live feeds on the IMAG screen, including in-depth colour grading work carried out in collaboration with a cinema colourist, using a series of cinematic LUTs.
To ensure a realistic render and spatial coherence across the scenography, Célestin built a full 3D model of the set from technical drawings. Artists at Mathematic Studio then rendered content from each camera position in the scene, producing four separate render files per pass. A dedicated SMODE project recomposed these renders into 2D video using a content map and 3D mapper giving the house a distinct visual identity for each track in the show.
Thanks to SMODE, video interacts directly with:
BPM synchronisation via SMODE's tempo tool locked video loops to the tempo of each track. Working to a shared methodology with Mathematic Studio, all video content was produced in durations of 4, 8 or 16 seconds, with each second corresponding to one musical beat at the correct BPM. The composition timeline also enabled precise processing of live feeds on the IMAG screen, including in-depth colour grading work carried out in collaboration with a cinema colourist, using a series of cinematic LUTs.
To ensure a realistic render and spatial coherence across the scenography, Célestin built a full 3D model of the set from technical drawings. Artists at Mathematic Studio then rendered content from each camera position in the scene, producing four separate render files per pass. A dedicated SMODE project recomposed these renders into 2D video using a content map and 3D mapper giving the house a distinct visual identity for each track in the show.
Thanks to SMODE, video interacts directly with:
