Lüz Studio Uses AI To Create Vintage Looks For Leon Bridges' The Boundless Tour

By Ellen Lampert-Greaux Aug 4, 2022 11:07am

Leon Bridges is out on the tail end of his first major tour, The Boundless Tour, which set out last March and is now on the arena portion, that kicked off at at The Theater at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas on Friday, July 29, 2022 and wraps in the US in early September. Production design, including staging, and projection was done by the creative team at Lüz Studio in Montreal, who also collaborated with Leon Bridges' long-time LD Bobby Mathias for the lighting design

Leon Bridges, image courtesy of Luz Studio

"We were commissioned to propose a creative direction for this tour," says Matthieu Larivée, creative producer and partner at Lüz. "Leon’s music is smooth, so the design was important to make sure that he reached out to a wider audience. We proposed a production design with a large upstage LED screen were we could do some virtual set extensions and also create I-Mag integration to avoid side screens and a double focus. The set extension is an art form at Lüz, so once again we had the liberty to animate the virtual lights on site."

The designers wanted to stay true to Bridges' style, which Larivée describes as "retro but modern. Those set extensions had this retro aesthetic but because of the live lighting control , it felt also very modern. The I-Mag was mainly driven by Notch VFX real time FX. The artwork for his tour is very trippy and we wanted to create that vibe to create a dynamic look for the I-Mag."

They also brought in artificial intelligence, thru Notch, as Larivée explains: "To kill the background of the camera feed and then create those trippy colored echos. That’s very very techy, but the look is very vintage. That’s a breakthrough because now we don’t have to stage a specific location for the artist in order to control the background for cameras. It required a lot of R&D from our team, with Notch designer Simon Rouhier and disguise programmer Philippe Marquis doing a lot of trial and errors for multiple weeks at our studio. This is an innovative use of AI on the live-event scene, which is challenging as elements in a live performance change daily. This is a big advance in show business," says Larivée.

Staging-wise, the Leon Bridges design team wanted to have the wings to reach out to the crowd, so they proposed using the local stages and adding a thrust with a Plexiglass B-stage with lights beneath to create an intimate moment. "There’s also a printed vinyl on stage to have LB’ signature on those stages. All Access in LA provided those as well as custom LED brackets for the band riser. We had great support from the production manager Kit Blanchard," adds Larivée.

Lighting-wise, it was a first collaboration with Leon Bridges' long-time LD Bobby Matthias. "We proposed a truss layout and fixtures to match our production design and we worked with him merging the video looks while rehearsing at the LMG Vegas studio for a week," Larivée explains. "For Bobby took over the lighting design then and bring is magic in. He knows exactly what’s the vibe on each piece of music . It was a great collaboration."

PRG supplied lights, including fixtures by PRG, Elation, Robe, Martin, and TMB, with a grandMA console, while Fuse supplied video including disguise media servers and LED screens by ROE, and Panasonic cameras.