COLDPLAY - MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
// COLDPLAY
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES WORLD TOUR.
WORLDWIDE // 2022 - 2023
We’ve been navigating a multitude of cosmic expeditions with Coldplay for several years now and each project just gets bigger and better.
Our cosmic journey working with Coldplay began on their live shows in late 2015, with a few promo shows that soon led to the SuperBowl Half-time show with Beyonce, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, quickly followed by the 'A Head Full of Dreams' Tour in 2016 which kicked off in Buenos Aires.
Towards the end of 2020, during the dreaded lockdown, we were speaking to Phil Harvey and Misty Buckley about these wild ideas for a sustainable Coldplay show based around their then-upcoming album, Music of the Spheres. The concept of the album itself was so inspiring, and we started putting many ideas together based on many theoretical concepts, including the harmony of the spheres.
Fast forward to 2021 and we commenced a year of global promo shows with Coldplay that eventually led us to Costa Rica in 2022 to kick off the Music of the Spheres World Tour.
LIVE SHOW.
MUSIC.
By the time it came to designing up the tour in early 2022, we’d been living and breathing the Music Of The Spheres cosmos for a long time and had many visuals and ideas to bring to life on the incredible set and screen design.
The new album provided multiple opportunities for further exploration into the Coldplay cosmos. For the opening track, Higher Power, we delved into the aesthetic of the music video and combined the amazing dancing alien holograms with cosmic pixel rain textures. The 10-minute-long epic, Coloratura, became a journey through stunning nebulas, gold particles, worm holes and rainbow light shards. Given the length of the track we worked in Unreal engine to create all the scenes in real-time 3D and save render time.
The new track My Universe, featured K-pop band BTS. We worked with Dimension Studios to incorporate volumetric video captures of the members into the visuals to give the effect of them being beamed into the live show.
CREATIVE VISION & ART DIRECTION
The tour stage featured a giant crescent screen, circular LED floor and 4 x 360 LED spheres. Our creative process began by taking the designs we had created for the promo shows the year before and adapting them to create seamless immersive visuals across the surfaces on the tour stage. We also revisited and re-worked track creatives from previous years such as Magic, Fix You, Clocks, Paradise and Viva La Vida and brought them into the Music Of The Spheres space.
‘IT’S ALWAYS SUCH A PLEASURE WORKING WITH COLDPLAY. THERE’S NO OTHER LIVE SHOW EXPERIENCE LIKE IT, AND WE’RE SO GRATEFUL TO BE A PART OF SUCH AN ALL-STAR TEAM THAT DESIGNS AND CREATES THESE INCREDIBLE MOMENTS FOR SO MANY PEOPLE WORLDWIDE!’
“‘AMAZING, PRO-ACTIVE, GENIUS LEVEL WORK’
- PHIL HARVEY, COLDPLAY CREATIVE DIRECTOR”
Thanks especially to Phil Harvey, Coldplay Creative Director, Misty Buckley, Set Designer, Sam Seager & the whole Coldplay video team!
// TEAM
CLIENT: PHIL HARVEY // MISTY BUCKLEY // COLDPLAY
CREATIVE DIRECTOR & FOUNDER: TOM BAIRSTOW
PRODUCER: ALICE RYLAND
LEAD DESIGNER: LYDIA CAPLAN
LEAD VIDEO DESIGNER: EMILE FREDERICK
LEAD TECHNICAL ARTIST: FLORIAN LECOQ
MOTION DESIGNER: DAN RICHARDS
MOTION DESIGNER: SEAN BONE
MOTION DESIGNER: LIAM GILHEANY
MOTION DESIGNER: HASAN NASIR
MOTION DESIGNER: DANA COULING
