France - Nearly 30 years ago, Mathieu Kassovitz's film La Haine influenced an entire generation of French youth, winning the 1995 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Director and the European Film Award for the Discovery of the Year, before rapidly becoming a classic of French cinema.
At the end of 2024, this cult film took to the stage in the form of an immersive and explosive musical, combining dance, rap, film and theatre – La Haine, Jusqu'ici rien n'a changé (La Haine, Nothing Has Changed So Far), produced by La Haine Production, with Live Nation as the executive producer. In this theatrical adaptation, 15 scenes follow a group of three friends from a rough suburb in Paris, against the background of an impactful original soundtrack. At the heart of this artistic feat lies a technological pillar: Smode, the media server and real-time compositing platform developed by Smode Tech.
Created by video producer and stage designer Silent Partners Studio, the ambitious project meets a demanding set of specifications. The aim was to recreate a cinematic work on stage in total immersion, using a complex interactive video environment created using Unreal Engine and synchronised in real time with the stage performance. In particular, Smode enabled harmonious integration of the video content, managed the NDI streams during the residency, and facilitated precise synchronisation with the music, lighting and a spinning floor where actors perform.
This meticulous orchestration is made possible by Smode, which exploits the capabilities of the media server's 10-bit pipeline to faithfully render the richly coloured 3D environments – essential elements of the cinematic aesthetic – in real time, without any visual artefacts or loss of quality.
“It would have been tedious to carry out this project without Smode,” comments Romain Delaplace, the Smode operator responsible for integrating and programming the content for this musical. He was able to call on Romain Labat (in charge of the touring part), with the two technicians working in tandem to divide up the tasks involved in programming and broadcasting the videos. The technical video file was put together by Romain Fior, while head video/LED technician Hugo Bouhalassa ensured that the equipment worked properly. The technical team worked under the direction of Nathalie Couturier (production) and Claude Muller (technical).
One of the main challenges was to recreate certain iconic camera angles and movements from the film, including the famous monologue by Vinz (played by Vincent Cassel in the movie) in front of his bathroom mirror, reproduced on stage with a camera filming the actor and broadcasting the images live. Five cameras in total are used in the show, including two simultaneously during the car theft scene, with live content switching managed by Smode.
Two Barco 30K projectors display part of the content onto a front stage tulle, while the back of the stage is made of an 18 x 8m LS 3.9 Pro LED video screen. The entire video equipment was provided by Alabama Média, a Groupe Novelty company. The projection and LED, coupled with the stage acting, essentially offers three depths of field, bringing a natural continuity between the projected images and the stage action.
“Smode was not only pivotal to the video content management, but also in helping to create the visual illusion that is a fundamental element of the scenic narrative, allowing us to be very close to the original aesthetic of the movie,” adds Delaplace. “Smode made it possible to manage and fluidify a high video stream for perfect synchronisation.”
Romain Delaplace concludes by highlighting the key role played by Smode in meeting all technical and artistic requirements, and helping to make the technology totally invisible for an unforgettable immersive experience: “In addition to the fundamental role played by Smode technology, the Smode Tech team helped us throughout the project: their feedback and support were decisive in meeting the many challenges of this project.”
After the acclaimed residency at the end of 2024 at La Seine Musicale (Paris), La Haine, Jusqu'ici rien n'a changé is currently on tour until the end of December 2025, with over 50 performances in France and abroad.
