Phish at the Sphere was always going to be very different from U2’s first residency at the immersive Las Vegas venue. Both bands are known for pushing the boundaries of live performance. But they rarely approached it the same way. U2’s 40-date Sphere was a polished, extravagant rock show with (almost) identical set lists throughout. Sphere was the perfect canvas for rock stars like Bono and The Edge to appear not just big, but super-sized.
Phish, on the other hand, is only performing four shows and has no plans to repeat a single song. And judging by recent interviews, Abigail Rosen Holmes, the show’s co-creative director, didn’t want to risk going overboard with the visuals; her goal has always been to keep the focus on Phish and the music, using Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot LED screen to enhance the tunes rather than distract from them. “We wanted to get the most out of the room and also support Phish in what Phish does best.” She said Washington PostWhat Phish does best is jam, improvise and showcase the band’s next-level musicianship.
But that was before the first night, when the Holmes and Phish frontman Trey Anastasio We’ve been tight-lipped about what the show will entail, not to mention that all four nights will have a theme. Now the first show is scheduled and it went off without a hitch. Fans in attendance seemed captivated by the experience, and those streaming live from home praised the first show as one of the best-sounding Phish shows they’d ever heard, even if they didn’t get to experience the whole immersion first-hand. The rendering on the huge screen of the Sphere was quite strange, but never over the top.
This morning, as Phish’s legions in Vegas rested for round two, I chatted with the show’s hosts. another co-creative director Jean-Baptiste Hardouin and producer Daniel Jean. Both work at the Moment Factory in Montreal. Check out the company’s projects, and it’s immediately clear that Hardoin and Co. comfortable working in unique spaces. They’ve done domes before. But four nights of Phish at the Sphere required careful preparation and visualizations that were flexible enough to keep up if a 10-minute song suddenly stretched to 25 minutes.
“With the group, it was pretty clear what you could and couldn’t do,” Hardoin said. “Phish was working harder than ever on visual creativity. It was fun to build this road together and explore it.” Four completely different shows presented a challenge – U2 ran the same piece every night – and there was no tons between the fall announcement of the Sphere run and this week’s performances. “We had to reinvent our production process,” Jean told me. “So we turned to our innovation team to see how we could use some technology to create content faster.”
“We started with the idea of doing 70 percent pre-rendered scenes, which is done in a more traditional way with CG and everything else, and 30 percent in real time using Unreal Engine and other tools. Notch and some artificial intelligence,” Jean said. By the time the show started, that balance started to look like 50/50. This is Phish, after all, and the jams don’t quite lend themselves to pre-rendered video. “In fact, we are now playing content in real time at 16K by 16K resolution, which we believe has never been done before,” Jin said.
some moments last night it felt like you were seeing huge versions of old visualizers from Winamp or iTunes. Others led the crowd in challenging, exciting scenes“This place is very theatrical,” Hardoin said. “Sometimes you just create a nice environment in a space and people are surrounded by that environment. You don’t have to be so anxious about moving and stuff. You just have to leave them for a while to enjoy the music.” There will always be people who expect more. But you also have to consider that a significant portion of this audience will be influenced anything, and for now you can only hurt their feelings. Sphere is IMAX on steroids. This can be a lot, even if you are completely sober.
In March, the team had the opportunity to preview what the show would look like in The Circle. But their personal collaboration began much earlier: Anastasio said Associated Press that he first met with Holmes for preliminary planning back in June. Meetings also took place in Montreal and New York, Hardouan said. Even while apart, Holmes, Hardoin and Anastasio were in constant contact (often daily) to discuss production design, stage and lighting design, potential set lists for each night, and so on.
There is only one full-size sphere. But the miniature version was created with the goal of creating a hyper-directed audio mix, which is handled by Phish’s sound designer Harry Brown. He said Washington Post that Phish would have a “soundscape that would be much broader than U2’s.”
Moment Factory also built a mini-dome for test screenings at its Montreal base. In their free time, the company’s artists and designers spent many hours in virtual reality, working with a digital representation of the Sphere to try out how their renderings and CGI sets would look from all angles. “No matter how much we prepare for a show like this, we won’t be able to see the outcome before it happens in real time,” Jean said. Reading and reacting to this atmosphere is where animation based on Unreal and Notch can prove valuable. The team can increase or decrease the indicators at will. “We knew we could adapt to what we were feeling in the room at that particular moment.”
So far, only two groups have performed on the Sphere stage. Dead and Company will be the third next month. I asked Hardoin what advice he would give to those lucky enough to have a future event there. His answer was simple. “Try something,” he said. “This is a new paradigm for live performances, music shows and so on. Some things were problems in the creative process. We are not used to such an environment (and have not thought about it), can people experience motion sickness? Is it too fast? Isn’t that exciting enough? My advice is to try something.”
Phish’s remaining three nights at the Circle will be available to stream live. from the group’s websiteIf you’re only interested in audio, SiriusXM will air every show the next day on Fish station and the final performance will take place on Sunday.
I will finish transmission of request Phish’s video production team from many of those who watched the film from home last night. Just stick to the big plans, guys. This is the Sphere we are talking about. Let people understand, even if it will never be the same as having a ticket.
