Every night, the creative team has to be able to jam along with the band to deliver an equally rich visual narrative
Interview: Sam Pattinson on Creating Visual Magic for Dead & Co’s Sphere Shows
Every night, the creative team has to be able to jam along with the band to deliver an equally rich visual narrative
The Grateful Dead performed their first show nearly 60 years ago. Since then the world has changed radically and technology has advanced in unfathomable ways, yet their music has evolved along the same path laid out in 1965. Dead & Company, today’s incarnation of the iconic jam band, honors this legacy of improvisational, psychedelic rock delighting generations of fans—and for the rest of this summer, blowing their minds with an unprecedented residency at Sphere in Las Vegas.
Unlike the groundbreaking U2 show, which was mostly the same epic experience every time, Dead & Co changes their set list for each of the 30 nights’ performances and the improvisational nature of their work means the length of each song is also variable. In a high-tech venue like Sphere the visuals are an integral part of the concert experience so the creative team managing lights, cameras, animations, compositing and real-time rendering dynamically across a 16k immersive screen has to be able to jam along with the band to deliver a rich visual narrative. Led by Sam Pattinson, co-founder of Treatment Studio with Willie Williams, that visual narrative comes together from a library of components that is rearranged and re-rendered on demand. We were thrilled to be invited to see the last two shows in June and have the opportunity to witness the brilliant visual work resonate with unforgettable performances of the songs we’ve loved for decades.
What’s your Treatment Studio origin story?
I was a carpenter into my late 20s. Then I had a breakthrough, from a friend called Adam Smith who had a company called Vegetable Vision. They did visuals and were really very innovative. Adam is still doing great work. He does the Chemical Brothers show, for instance, which is extraordinary. He introduced me to another friend, Willie Williams, who was doing the concerts for the Rolling Stones’ 40 Licks tour in 2002.
I was at a company called onedotzero. We started a sister company called Wonder Zero Industries. They had this network of talent around the world—of animators and filmmakers and artists. We invited all of these people to contribute to the shows. Because of this talent, we were able to offer our clients and the bands really varied bodies of work. I eventually left onedotzero, and Willie and I set up Treatment Studio properly in 2009.
How do you and Willie work together?
We work quite separately. We do sort of drink from the same bowl, but we’ve got space between each other creatively which is great. I think that sort of adds to the breadth of the folio. We’re a strange beast, Treatment, because there’s this whole blurred line between producer and creative director. Coming into this industry late, when I was embryonic, alongside the advent of the LED and desktop software we could get for nothing, we could just make the content ourselves. Because of that, we could sort of draw roles each time with each client. It’s very harmonious. It’s really the best idea wins.
When you say “the best idea wins,” do you mean between you and Willie, or are you talking about a team that is working on a specific project?
Absolutely everyone. Look at Dead & Co. I was the lead on that, but we’ve got our design directors Damien Hale, Tim Booth and Sam Munnings. They all made massive contributions to it, with the animators alongside them. They’re all coming up with ideas. Those ideas are encouraged and not smothered. There is a sort of flexibility within the hierarchy and it works really well. I think it helps people with the confidence to put out ideas and see them land.
Was there a lot of knowledge sharing about Sphere between the shift from U2 to Dead & Co?
We had a lot less time on Dead & Co. A lot of time was spent with Willie, Brandon Kraemer, who’s our technical director, and Lizzie Pocock, who produced it, working out the best way to play content and make content and the whole workflow and the in-house system and the service system. On top of that, Willie was obviously able to understand what the creative rules were of the Sphere, and what content did in the space. We really gained hugely from this information. With U2, there were some rules established. On Dead & Co, we adhere to lots of those rules, but we broke some of them too, because Dead & Co—as a client and as a spectacle—is very different culturally to U2. There was more opportunity to be surreal. We could be goofier; we could be more humorous. We could be looser in a way. We could break those rules and add to them. I think that’s the thing, having done two shows in the Sphere: we’re still learning about the space and we’re still learning about what works and what doesn’t.
You have a history with Dead & Co, as well?
Yeah, we did the “final tour” and we contributed some work earlier, as well. The real connection was that I’ve designed John Mayer’s shows since 2013. He saw our work when he was guesting on the 50th anniversary show for The Stones and then he got in touch. Obviously, this is a collaboration with him and Bob [Weir] and Mickey [Hart].
Obviously, we thought that the last tour would be their last tour, but then the Sphere came around. John is the source of many of the ideas in the show. His concept is what you see now. Bob and Mickey also brought very strong ideas for what they wanted. There’s a great relationship they’ve all got. So for us, from a collaboration point of view, it was really harmonious and positive.
Can you dig into that a little bit further: what does the creative ideation process look like?
Another thing you learn about the Sphere is that you need to have a concept in place a long time before the show. In both instances, the bands kind of knew what the show was going to be before they went into production. John, like Willie for U2, had really given it a lot of thought and presented this idea in November of last year, about this journey through these universes, these different worlds, these different places, these different emotions.
I’m not allowed to say too much, even though it’s all over the internet, but you know, there’s a very strong bookend to the show. We start in a relevant place, and we leave there and we go into space and we start this incredible journey through these ideas and concepts. Then we return to that place in a different time. There’s this history to the whole thing, and it’s unexpected. Within there, even though John had very strong ideas about the places we’d go, and so did Bob and Mickey, it still gave us this open book. Any sort of idea that we had could fit in there. It was a really clever template and it encouraged the entire team to contribute a huge amount of work. We produced five-and-a-half hours worth of content for a three-hour show. The game was always to over-deliver so they could change the show up for the fans.
How much of the production is planned in advance and how much is riffing along with the band? It’s not only that each night is a different setlist, but each song is not necessarily an exact duration.
The only sort of live and real-time rendered content is during Mickey’s drums and space and that’s run by a guy called Brett Bolton and he uses Notch. We used photogrammetry to scan a chunk of Mickey’s drum collection. We did 80 drums in the end, from the 1000 that he owns. That was put through Notch, so they’re sound reactive. We take the MIDI feed from the drums and from Mickey’s setup. That is actually driving the video. On top of them, Brett is controlling the visual and bring it up and down with the performance, which changes every night. The rest of the show is pre-rendered but we are developing the whole reactive approach to the content for the show.
We’ve got a bank of material and the way it works is that we get a setlist, hopefully the day before, and reallocate the looks to the different songs. There are certain things that stay in the same place every night, like the opening animation and the return animation. But again, the band will play whatever song they want to do and we might have to shorten those pieces to fit around them. It keeps it really interesting and it keeps everyone involved looking in.
Your team has live intervention—regarding how long something is playing back for and when to transition from one piece from the library to another piece, right?
Yeah, and it’s really important. Danny Purdue controls a Disguise server, the control that plays out the video. He’s very good. He is the key to how we can sort of keep up with the music, and it works both ways. They’ll play the songs different structurally and the durations will change. Sometimes we’ll get a song which is typically 12 minutes long, and they might stop playing it after nine. We’ve got a loop with an intro and and outro.
There are so many little, nuanced details that make all the difference in the world yet a lot of people don’t consciously see them. Why are they important?
You know, in terms of video content, any show that has it has been using big screens for a long time, that’s how you translate the show for a stadium audience. It’s always been through these screens. You realize that some people sort of get the disproportionate sense of importance with it but I think we’ve always been in check with it. If the screen turns off, but the music still playing, you’ve still got a show. If the music turns off, there’s no show.
There’s a lot of effort we put into those details, and at the same time we know that most people don’t notice them and if the screen turned off it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But then it’s always like going to a football game over here. You know, you might not know who scored the goal or who got sent off or any of the details of the game but you know whether you’ve seen a good game or not. I think you have to try to have those details and try to really make it as good as possible. Because it does translate to the experience.
What drives your commitment to these details?
I think it is the genuine desire to deliver a good show. And it’s for the band, you know, who we have great respect for, and for the fans who invest their money. They deserve it and I think every time we look at something we see that we can improve it. We can’t get to a point where we just need to get out of the way and let them get on with it. I think it’s something we’ve learned over the years. You know when you’re looking at a lazy show. You know when you’re looking at something you’ve never seen before.
You really want to convince the audience to be in the moment, and yet you can’t distract them from the music. In the Sphere that can be something you’ve really got to manage. Also, occasionally, you really want to confuse the audience so they don’t actually know what they’re looking at or don’t understand how that’s working. We do that through detail most of the time.
Do you love an Easter egg?
I’m not gonna talk about it. But at the beginning we sort of over-egged the Easter eggs and we drew back a bit. There’s some very beautiful moments during the paint section and things that people have picked up on and obviously Jerry Garcia’s such an important part of this. It’s a very beautiful homage to him.
I used to work in Martha’s Vineyard, fry cooking, and the Deadheads would come in and work for a bit for a season then they’d go back out on the road. I never really got the music, at that time, but I’ve been aware of this thing and the way it grows. Now, I finally understand how beautiful the music is. How wonderful it all is. And then this culture of it. I can’t think of a comparison in England or Europe. There’s nothing like it. There’s The Stones and there’s U2; there are these other bands with very dedicated followings. But there’s just this other thing with Dead & Co, and it’s so rich and it’s sort of encourages you to think about Easter eggs and because there’s so many wonderful things to go back and reference. There are very few bands that could put a show on like this, and bring people like us in and bring in such talent. The reality is the imagination of these artists, this band of musicians, and their open mindedness, is exceptional and that’s really why you’re looking at the show.
Dead & Co’s Sphere residency ends on 10 August 2024. Fans who make the trip to Vegas should also check out the Dead Forever Experience at the Venetian Hotel to see an archive of images, relics, merch and more. And given that the Venetian has an indoor walkway to Sphere it’s the best and easiest place to stay for those attending the shows.