Anniversary and Live Show: 10 Years of Jakobs Medien

For the 10th anniversary of Jakobs Medien, we took our guests on a journey through the company and product history - and premiered our latest feature as a live show in a virtual set.

There was something to celebrate: 10 years of Jakobs Medien GmbH. That’s why on June 29th, together with our clients, partners, companions and friends, we threw a party to remember - with a summer fest and anniversary celebration at our space in Kreuzberg. Drinks, studio tours, an Urban Courtyard Lounge, food truck and DJ sets late into the night. On top of that, there was a product show featuring a Mixed Reality Live Panel, Company Keynote, and a comedy special act - all produced live for our guests in virtual sets on our greenscreen stage.

What started as a simple anniversary party quickly evolved into one of the most ambitious projects in our company history. We didn’t want to just throw a nice party for our guests - we wanted to show where the journey is heading. The idea: use the anniversary itself as a showcase for our latest technology, demonstrating the full range of our capabilities. From concept and technical implementation to live direction - everything from a single source, all in one evening.

The Event Concept: More Than a Company Party

The event was structured in three parts: an open networking section with studio tours and catering, a show block featuring the keynote and live panel, and the subsequent party with DJ and bar. This format allowed us to combine the professional standards of a product presentation with the relaxed atmosphere of a summer party.

Right from the welcome, our guests could take a look behind the scenes. Guided tours through our Urban Studio and the control room revealed the infrastructure behind our productions: from greenscreen walls and camera technology to the render workstations that calculate our virtual worlds in real time. For many clients, this was their first direct look at the technical processes - and the interest was enormous.

Welcome to the Urban Studios

Our story began in 2012, when Nicolai Jakobs received a startup grant for his idea of offering pre-made motion graphic templates for video productions. 10 years later, the “Template Werk” that launched from a living room couch has become Jakobs Medien GmbH - a full-service event agency with 12 permanent employees and its own studio spaces for virtual productions, delivering event technology, content conception, hybrid and brand events, trade show appearances, and audiovisual content for marketing purposes.

What happened along the way was shared by Nicolai through a keynote he delivered at the anniversary celebration in front of around 70 guests and his team members. The story of his company, staged as an emotional rollercoaster full of anecdotes about successes and setbacks, courage and doubt, experimentation, failure, getting back up and evolving.

Keynote: Live is a Rollercoaster

The presentation took place on the greenscreen stage of our Urban Studio. Via a 75” preview monitor mounted above the studio, which was open to the audience, viewers witnessed how the speaker merged live with the pre-created virtual sets.

The goal was to relive the most important moments in JM’s history together: not just as a thank-you speech, but presented like a stage play through the composition of virtual backgrounds, motion graphics, video clips, music and sound effects.

The technical execution of the keynote was a project in itself. A total of over 15 individual virtual scenes were created in Unreal Engine, each visually underscoring a chapter of the company’s history. From the early freelancer days in a Berlin shared apartment kitchen to the first own office space to moving into today’s studio facilities - every milestone had its own virtual set. The transitions between scenes were orchestrated with custom-produced motion graphics and sound effects, creating a continuous narrative flow.

Particularly impressive was the use of camera tracking during the keynote. The virtual camera followed the speaker’s movements in real time, creating the impression that Nicolai was actually moving through the various rooms and scenarios. For the audience, who could see the speaker live on the greenscreen stage while simultaneously watching the finished compositing on the monitor, this direct comparison was a genuine eye-opening experience.

The Technology Behind the Show: Virtual Production in Real Time

For the entire production, we relied on our proven workflow: virtual sets were modeled in Blender, rendered in Unreal Engine 5, and composited with the camera feed in real time via Aximmetry. What made this evening special was the complexity: three different show formats - keynote, comedy and panel - had to transition seamlessly into each other, each with its own virtual environments and camera setups.

Our directing team controlled the evening via the NewTek TriCaster, which mixed the various camera signals, video inserts and virtual backgrounds together in real time. The automated sequences we had tested in previous productions enabled precise transitions between program segments. A teleprompter system helped the speaker stay on track while simultaneously triggering the matching virtual scenes.

Live Panel: Tell a Story, that will create an Emotion

Warmed up by stand-up comedy from Kawus Kalantar, the evening concluded with a moderated live talk show. Here, we handed the virtual stage over to invited event production experts Norbert Henning, Baptiste Stecher and Christine Clemenz.

Moderator Katie Gallus led the discussion “Can we achieve next-level storytelling through mixed reality productions?” and made sure that the conversations of the mixed reality enthusiasts never lost sight of the client perspective.

We used the panel as a case study to test the visual integration of survey tools, live remote panelists, and rapid camera switches with perfectly matched 3D backgrounds in show mode. We also wanted to playfully introduce a new product to our clients and demonstrate what’s already possible in our studio, what’s working elsewhere, and provide inspiration for how events can be built in virtual or mixed reality sets.

The panel impressively demonstrated how mixed reality technology can elevate the classic panel discussion. As the panelists discussed, relevant data, quotes and visualizations were displayed in real time within the virtual set. Live polls from the audience appeared as interactive graphics in the background, and for the virtual connection of another guest, a second virtual set was seamlessly activated - without any visible break in the overall image.

The Audience Experience: Physical and Virtual United

For our guests, the combination of physical experience and virtual production was the highlight of the evening. They could see the speaker live on stage while simultaneously watching on the monitor how he appeared in a completely different world. This transparency was a deliberate choice: we didn’t just want to show the results, but also make the process behind them visible.

After the show, there were numerous conversations with clients who were inspired by what they’d experienced. Many recognized for the first time the potential of virtual sets for their own events - whether for product launches, conferences or internal town hall meetings. The immediate experience had a much stronger impact than any presentation or demo video could have achieved.

Lessons Learned: What We Took Away from the Anniversary

Pulling off an event of this scale as an in-house production pushed us enormously as a team. Among the most important takeaways:

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Despite our experience with live productions, the dress rehearsal the day before was indispensable. The complexity of three different show formats, each with their own virtual environments, required exact timing that could only be achieved through multiple run-throughs.

Redundancy is not a luxury. We had backup solutions ready for all critical systems. An additional render PC, a second network connection, and pre-produced fallback backgrounds for emergencies. Fortunately, we didn’t need any of them - but knowing they were there gave the entire team confidence.

The direct comparison convinces. The decision to open the studio to the audience and make the production process transparent was one of the best aspects of the evening. Clients who had previously only seen the end result suddenly understood the effort and creative achievement behind a virtual production.

Own content strengthens the brand. By using our own story as content, we could communicate authentically and emotionally. It wasn’t a staged demo scenario, but a real story with real emotions - and that’s exactly what made the difference.

The 10th anniversary was more than a retrospective for us. It was a statement: Jakobs Medien is ready for the next ten years - with the technology, the team and the passion to take events and media productions to the next level.

If you’re interested in the panel results, check out this JM blog post.