The YouWorkForThem Blog

U2

2009.08.11

In February of 2009 we got a call from Catherine Owens, the long time super creative director for the uber-famous band U2. Catherine came across our work and knew she found the team who could help with U2’s 2009 world tour (titled 360). After a quick stint of meetings in New York, we came back to the Bangkok studio and begin work for the following two months on numerous ideas.

 

We began our development on the videos for the tracks Beautiful Day, Ultra Violet and The Unforgettable Fire. The first series of works involved filming small fish common in the canals of Bangkok for very fluid and dreamlike sequences. For the second series we explored mapping the films into a 3d space and further distorting them for an enhanced depth and perspective. Then for the last series of works we explored more solid colors, 2d and fast paced clips to stimulate lighting effects and screen energy during the performance. In the end we created over 100 different sequences, with over 300 total clips delivered in various formats, colors and speeds.

 

The concert opened in Barcelona on June 30, 2009 to a sold out crowd of 90,000 fans. The screen that displayed this work was designed by Willie Williams, Mark Fisher, Chuck Hoberman, and Frederic Opsomer. The screen was composed of 888 individual hexagonal panels that support 500,000 Barco LED pixels. It can transform from seven meters to 22 meters high and move up and down. To sum it up, this is the most massive and badass screen ever and we were mega-amped to have worked on such an intense project.

 

Music track Beautiful Day is copyright © 2000 U2 & Universal-Island Records Ltd.


As mentioned in a previous post, me and the crew of YouWorkForThem Bangkok recently rocked over 300 videos for U2′s new tour. Finally today, we found some evidence of our contribution on the mega-screen! Not the best quality video (earthquake cam), but at least its a start for now. We hope we they decide to use more of the work in the set as the tour continues. Either way, we will be showing a preview of our contributions in due time. (our work kicks in around 1:10 for a short bit)

u2_ywft1

Back in February we got a nice call from Catherine Owens, long time super creative director for the uber-famous band U2. Catherine came across our video This is Agostina and knew she found the team who could help rock some video/visuals for this years U2 360 world tour. For the past few months we went to New York for meetings, came back to the Bangkok studio and have been rocking on over 200 video clips for the upcoming show. The concert opens in Barcelona on June 30, 2009 to a sold out crowd of 90,000 fans. For complete tour details you can visit the U2 Tour schedule. To get an idea of stage and the size of screen we created video work for (its MASSIVE), you can check out the U2 360 website.

 

As we come to wrap on this project, we are really excited/anxious to show everyone the video we contributed to the project. As soon as the tour gets rolling we will release more details (permitting all NDA rules of course). Till then, just go check out the show, I am sure U2 will give you one hell of a show!

Buamai

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