The Concert Stage Background
When it was decided the princesses had a band, and would have regular concert, we wanted them to have their own unique stage. And, while we were on it, we decided to make it a magical one.
In term of story, it would be cooler and more practical : the girls could summon it at the last minute, and we would be able to do a concert everywhere ! That’s basically what happens at the end of episode 107 - Sirens, when the girls have their concert right on the wreck of the S.S.Valentino (which, by the way, is probably a little unsafe. Rust and dust and other things like that).
However, summoning it in front of people is kind of a big shot, and it’s harder to pretend “eh, it’s normal ! It’s part of the show !”. I mean, who’d believe it ? People in Sunny Bay are already way too confortable with the daily-crystal-bizarre stuff that’s happening in their town, and we felt summoning too often the stage would really be pushing it to the point our audience wouldn’t like it anymore. So we tried to be careful with it, and only use the summon on already extraordinary situations (’cause when you magically raise a cruise boat, who cares you summon a little stage ?)
As you perhaps noticed, there are two types of concert : Inside (BFF / We Are Magic / Celebrate), and Outside (Revolution / Higher), yet the stage remain the same : In term of production, creating this “one only” stage, and sticking with it, was what allowed us to create the clips and easily insert them into the episodes. We could change (to a limit) what was around the stage (like in the example above with the boat), but not much more. Without the stage itself, we probably would have needed to change the whole background on each episode, meaning “no reuse”, which would have been really expensive. We had to be a little smarter and avoid it. :)
Concept art by Christophe Oliver, Line clean by Christophe Oliver, Benoit Maillochon and Vincent Rueda, Colored by Sylvain Fabre, Damien Hausson and Céline Lorthiois.
Lecteurs francophones ? Voici la version française du texte ci-dessous.