Nine Inch Nails: Lights In The Sky 2008 tour visuals (video)

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Follow on Bēhance

Nine Inch Nails: Lights In The Sky 2008 tour visuals

In 2008 I had the incredible opportunity to work on Nine Inch Nails' visionary Lights In The Sky tour, a multimedia rock concert unlike any other. We had three giant LED screens, hundreds of lights, interactive sensors, real-time effects engines, video cameras, and three significantly different set layouts.

I provided art direction for the show along with Trent Reznor, Moment Factory, and Roy Bennett and his team.

This tour production was awarded Creative Review's "Best in Book" accolade in their 2009 annual.

With the exception of the tour ad, the videos shown here are from the exceptional fan-produced live DVD/Blu-ray "Another Version Of The Truth."
30-second TV spot showing highlights from the tour.
"Vessel"

A repeating visual pulse struggles to lose control as it dissolves into static and noise.
"The Warning"

Pulsating shapes surround the band members on stage, and dance erratically with the distortions in the music. Some video cues and effects were triggered live by the keyboard player on stage.
"31 Ghosts IV"

Three layers of screens were used to create a three-dimensional landscape of flowing textures that surrounded the band.
"In This Twilight"

A night-time cityscape forms the backdrop for the concert's final song. Fires blaze and explosions rise up from the distant, wartorn city. At the song's climax we rise up towards the lights in the sky for which the tour was named, and in a brilliant burst of white all is gone, leaving only dim spotlights on the band members as they exit the stage one by one.
"Ghosts 21"

For the concert's instrumental middle section, we used three layers of screens to create a three-dimensional desert landscape to place the band in. Subsequent songs moved to a swamp landscape, and then to one of pure abstraction.
"Echoplex"

We designed a huge interactive drum sequencer with the help of Moment Factory's sensor technology. The drummer began the song's electronic beat by pushing virtual buttons on a screen, triggered by a sensor field that could detect his hand's location.
"Survivalism"

To recreate the surveillance theme of the song's music video, we placed surveillance cameras around the venue and displayed their footage live on a virtual security grid. A few pre-recorded scenarios were mixed in with the live footage, creating the illusion for the audience that we had cameras in the venue bathrooms - even in the bathroom stalls.