Billie
Eilish
LED Screen Video Content Creation, Notch VFX Design, Content Art Direction and D3 Programming Services.
We were tasked with conceptualising and creating the video content for Billie Eilish’s 2019 Coachella performance and the ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ sold-out world tour. Each song’s visual content was tailored to the song’s meaning, emotion and atmosphere.
“These are brilliant miniature American horror stories, the likes of which only Eilish is even attempting”
- The Guardian
“Billie’s energetic performance was highlighted by some of the most elaborate audio-visual presentations and staging of the 2019 Coachella to date.”
- Daily Mail
Photo by Matty Vogel
As with most projects we began by sketching our ideas out, gathering images for reference on the art direction and fully involving ourselves in the music and haunting world of Billie Eilish. Cour Design had briefed us that the show should feel like a journey through a dream world, with nightmarish imagery taking a prominent role. We embraced this and set about creating visual treatments for the songs alongside Billie’s existing visual language; the creature under the bed for ‘Bury a Friend’, the spiders for ‘You Should See Me in a Crown’, the burning dolls for ‘Watch…’ and so on.
Projects like these often involve multiple processes such as storyboarding, filming, 3D animation, hand drawn and 2D animation. Getting hands on with some of the process is always fun and the end result once everything comes together is very rewarding. Especially when you get to hang out with the spiders from Harry Potter!
Photo by Matty Vogel
For ‘Ocean Eyes’ and ‘Watch & Burn’ we created live camera effects using Notch. It’s a great tool to help breathe style in to live camera looks during the moments where the focus is entirley on Billie or any special guests such as Vince Staples during the Coachella performance.
For the intro to Billie’s show (below), she wanted the visuals to introduce the various elements that are within the upcoming show in a handmade aesthetic. We created a series of scenes where the character of Billie has nightmarish vision’s invade her dream and the audience are taken through the various elements of the show; the shadow people from ‘Copycat’, the sharks from ‘Ilomilo’, the hell scene from ‘Good Girls Go To Hell’ and so on. Then Finneas scored the track adding some particularly creepy tones to the already dark animation.