MPC Creative New York, alongside Radical Media, PS 260’s Matt Posey and a list of renowned collaborators, have created their first set of tour visuals for the group Depeche Mode’s 2017 Global Spirit Tour. The band will travel to over 21 countries and 32 cities, to play for an expected 1.5 million fans.

The project came to MPC via Radical Media Director Timothy Saccenti, a longtime friend and colleague of MPC Creative CD Alan Bibby, and is the first of its kind for the VFX, design and production studio. The team - which included Saccenti, Bibby and Creative Directors Rob Petrie and Andrei Juradowitch, - was turned around in a total of ten days to complete a series of abstract tour visuals in advance of the mid-March tour.

 

A fellow native of Essex, UK and Depeche mode fan dove into the project instantly: “The band is a global phenomenon from Essex near London in the UK, a county that didn’t always have the best reputation,” explains Petrie. “When we were planning the visuals, I just kept thinking to myself, ‘what would they be into? What would I personally want to experience if I was part of a sea of people watching them live?”

 

One recurring term emerged from the ideation process: ‘analog.’ Although Spirit is a carefully curated album reflecting a modern era, Tim, Rob, Alan and Andrei focused on a seemingly antiquated way of presenting the visuals. “We never wanted it crisp or digital,” says Petrie. “We wanted it to look and feel as though it wasn’t made within a computer –something we’re not generally used to seeing in 2017.”

 

The abstract concept was achieved by creating a collection of graphic interpretations of natural patterns representing terrain, organic water elements and a variety of other sources, and integrating them with hard surface digital forms and ‘techy glitches.’ “We play blasted these instead of rendering them at high fidelity to generate a lo-fi feeling,” notes Juradowitch.

 

This project is the first of several in the MPC Creative pipeline. “The major difference between doing this and what we’re typically doing when working for advertisers and agencies is a greater sense of artistic freedom,” Juradowitch adds. “We had to complement truly amazing music, and our hope is that the visuals speak to Depeche Mode’s devoted fan base as much as the music will during the performances.”