When it came time to start developing concepts for the 2015 Smoke + Mirrors experience, Imagine Dragons called Moment Factory to join their team. This tour would be the next step in a growing collaboration; we had handled creative direction for their “Gold” video, a live performance at the AMAs, the Smoke + Mirrors album launch, and a live TV spot for a Target ad featuring the single “Shot,” recorded outdoors in downtown Las Vegas during the 2015 Grammys.
One of the most exciting parts of working with recording artists like Imagine Dragons is collaborating on a concert experience that will take their fans to a whole new place. For the Grammys performance, we communicated back and forth with the band about how to offer fans both on site and watching from home an intimate experience of the show. To do this, we introduced an innovative circular stage that elevated above the audience during the song’s climax. Overhead, more than 20 cameras and a helicopter gained an impeccable view of the action for viewers at home. On the ground, 360-degree screens surrounded the audience, bathing them in light. Fans on site also wore illuminated LED bracelets made by PixMob; as they stood cheering around the stage, their arm gear became part of the stage design, connecting them in a shared experience to both the band and viewers at home.
Keeping an artistic relationship strong means always arriving to the table with fresh ideas that will visually amplify an artist’s presence and sound, offering their dedicated fans an immersive and dynamic experience of the live music they came to see. For the Smoke + Mirrors tour, we decided to take the audience on a transformative trip through a world that starts flat and colorless, moves through full-colour 3D realism into surrealistic distortion, psychedelia, and ethereal beauty. The stage features a series of tall square columns, at times working in sync to create a single stunning image, and at others splintering apart, almost disappearing completely. Each moment of the show is fine-tuned to reflect the emotional cues of Imagine Dragons’ set, sending rushes of visual stimuli to the audience, bringing the music forward as a cohesive, multi-sensory experience.
