NEW YORK — Touchdown Entertainment engaged New York-based creative shop ThinkBreatheLive to produce digital environments for the Super Bowl halftime show, including a dynamic LED experience that turned the stadium into an immersive panoramic concert screen.
Super Bowl attendees wore specially designed hats equipped with LED technology provided by Montreal-based company PixMob. The hats were remotely controlled to collectively form a massive LED screen on which TBL’s media was projected. The joint effort marked consecutive Super Bowl appearances for TBL after it produced content for last year’s halftime headliner and longtime client Beyoncé.
Creative director Andy Jennison led TBL’s creative team. "Getting to know Bruno as an artist, what has always stood out to me is his old-school personality,” Jennison explains. “He's an old soul who likes being on stage with his band, under the lights and playing the music. I wanted the content to honor that by keeping it musical and reflective of his level of energy and showmanship."
Tasked to visually enhance the live ceremonies and performances, as well as to electrify the fan-experience for TV viewers, TBL worked closely with Ricky Kirshner, executive producer, Touchdown Entertainment, as well as independent creative director/choreographer Jamie King and Bruno Mars’ creative director/lighting designer LeRoy Bennett. TBL was also charged with creating Pepsi branding via the animated halftime show intro.
Pre-visualizing large-scale content for MetLife Stadium presented the TBL team with technical challenges from the outset. They first built a model of the stadium in 3D compositing software. All of the content was then animated in After Effects and plastered on the model for testing.
“We had to start small and everything had to be precisely scaled," elaborates Jennison. "I also wanted to establish the best-case scenario early on if everyone had their LED caps on. We pixelated the seating charts accordingly and fed that data into the 3D model.”
ThinkBreatheLive credits included EP Kenny Pedini; VFX artists Ian Mayer, Adam Yost, Wes Townsend, and Fredrik Sundwall; compositor Eric Bigman and assistant producer Sarah Nadeau.