Note: this is the second part of a two-part interview with Hidden Road Studios. If you’re discovering this post now, make sure you check out the first part!
Hidden Road Studios was formed in 2018 by Video Director Tom Kirk and Motion Designer Rowan Glenn. Since then, they’ve designed elements for Miley Cyrus, Coldplay, Harry Styles, Imagine Dragons, Muse, and many more.
As a follow-up to our interview with Hidden Road Studios, Co-Founder Tom Kirk takes us through their journey as a creative team.
Early Days
Rowan and I were introduced to each other back in 2012 in Los Angeles. Rowan was in film school, and I had moved from London to experience LA’s exciting music and video scene. I’d been Muse’s live video director and content creator since 2001 and had begun making live video content and music videos for other artists such as The Black Keys and Kaz James.
In 2012, Muse needed visuals for their tour and VFX for a music video called “Panic Station.” Rowan was brought in for that by a director named Tim Qualtrough. After that, I took notice, and Rowan became a regular go-to for After Effects, editing, and colour.
After a year or so, I took on more work directing music videos for the likes of Billy Idol (“Save Me Now”), Lifehouse (“Hurricane”) and Metallica (“Moth into Flame” and “Dream No More”), which required VFX and editing. Rowan and I worked very closely on it, and it became clear that we had forged a great dynamic together. I was much more involved in producing and directing, whilst Rowan handled post-production. It was and is still a great fit.
Around 2016, we began to get interested in and embrace the boom in virtual reality in the live music sphere, and we worked closely with the talented producer Juan Santillan. We spent a lot of time discussing how best to enhance live concerts shot in VR with live motion graphics. After meeting Notch Co-Founder Matt Swoboda through Silent Partners’ J.T. Rooney, it became clear that Notch was the perfect platform to deliver these effects and looks.
After Rowan went to the first Notch workshop in LA, run by Notch Co-Founder Luke Malcolm, we quickly embraced the potential and workflow that Notch offers. After diving in headfirst and getting some assistance from the Notch team, we plunged into delivering real-time augmented reality effects within VR for the Coachella VR 2018 live stream. Working on-site with All of it Now and Six Degrees was a cutting-edge and groundbreaking experience.
I was also onsite at Coachella that year, directing screens for a colossal Odesza performance, which included a live drone show and a twenty-piece marching band.
We drove back together from the desert that night, elated with the results. It was then that we decided to form a company together, and Hidden Road Studios was born. 2018 quickly became busy for us. We shot a video with Sam Smith and Brandi Carlisle called “Party of One” and video content for Imagine Dragons alongside the talented creative director Mitchell Schellenger.
2019
We had a whirlwind of a first full year together at Hidden Road.
Muse released their album, Simulation Theory, in November 2018, and their tour began a few months later in February 2019, ending in Lima on 15 October 2019. As their live director, I, alongside Rowan, incorporated Notch as the primary software for Muse.
The band’s new creative director, Jesse Lee Stout, fully embraced the power of the software. We also worked closely with Silent Partners to bring the band’s performance to life and highlight the otherworldly and retrofuturist themes of the album.
A little later that year, our good friends at Blink asked us to join forces and deliver some Notch-driven looks for Khalid on his Free Spirit world tour.
At this point, the delightfully creative Alex Reardon of Silent Partners approached us for assistance on The Jonas Brothers’ Happiness Begins tour and Tyler The Creator’s IGOR tour. Alex fully adopted Notch for its grades, subtlety, and immediacy when dealing with onsite changes.
Rehearsals taught us a lot. We learned how best to work with creative, artists, and media server operators regarding Notch Blocks and delivery. Our organisation and parameters became as important as the final show material. When you have such limited time in rehearsals, a constant and clear methodology with our deliverables makes the workflow between teams an essential part of our thinking.
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire global healthcare system. In California, because of a high burden of cases, a lockdown order was announced on March 19, 2020. Due to the postponements of live events, we were still seeking fun projects and collaborations. We took this chance to double down on new possibilities, learning augmented reality and content creation within Notch. We embraced it for both 2D and 3D purposes.
Artists were still creating music, but production teams couldn’t shoot music videos on location. So we made a number of lyric videos and music videos in Notch and really enjoyed creating for J Balvin, The Used, Saint Motel, and The Jaded Hearts Club.
That year, XR performances became a significant factor for artists and creatives. With social distancing and COVID restrictions firmly in place, the ability to film an artist in an XR studio and to be able to create locations and sets through video became popular and an important asset to our industry.
In August of that year, Blink asked us to create an otherworldly performance for Doja Cat’s iconic “Say So / Like That” performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. After taking Blink’s 3D model and creative, we recreated all of the XR environment in Notch. We had a multi-cam shoot for the live performance, and with the highly talent Corey Fitzgerald as the LD, we created a lot of magic!
With our friends and colleagues at Blink, we worked on a J Balvin XR performance, which premiered inside the Fortnite platform. It was a multi-song, multi-cam performance featuring J Balvin driving through a psychedelic landscape on top of a retro muscle car, amongst other landscapes made in Notch.
Again, due to COVID restrictions, late-night TV shows required artists to film performances outside the studios themselves. We made a particularly memorable production for Fitz and the Tantrums, which we shot with a tiny team in an empty sports stadium. We filmed the whole song with one continuous Steadycam shot that ended with animated fireworks across the LA skyline. It was a lot of fun and meant that much more with everyone in lockdown.
The end of the year brought us one of our most fun jobs to date. The wonderful and talented brothers who are AJR had sadly had their tour cancelled due to COVID. Their creative director, Mitchell Schellenger, asked us to come to a production facility in Rock Lititz, Pennsylvania, and film the entire show over four days with their whole arena show (and more!) as if the set was fully live. With a lot of camera trickery and clever editing, we brought the band’s vision to life as they performed their show while talking fans through the creative process at the same time. The show was played “live” on Boxing Day as an online ticketed event. We were very proud and honoured to be part of it.
2021
2021 was a tremendous year for us with incredible artists and collaborations despite an ever-threatening backdrop of variable COVID restrictions through which we were, of course, still determined to create and be inspired as much as possible. We worked on late-night performances for Alec Benjamin and Imagine Dragons and a Tiny Desk multi-cam shoot with Young Thug and Travis Barker at Harry Houdini’s beautiful LA property.
We were then given the very elaborate task of shooting music videos for the entirety of The Metallica Blacklist, an album featuring covers of every track from Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album by fifty-three artists. We assembled the collection in conjunction with the original album’s thirtieth anniversary. Each song had its own video, which we created using a mixture of studio-filmed acting performances, stock footage, and Notch VFX. We were thrilled with the results and feedback.
I was then asked to direct Maroon 5’s tour, which turned out to be the first successful post-COVID tour in North America. It was a wonderful experience for the band, crew, and fans and a great reminder of how lucky we are to be in this industry, bringing live music to the world.
July brought Miley Cyrus’s tour requiring content and live camera Notch effects. Alex Reardon and Molly Hawkins were great to work with, and Miley was a joy to work with and for. They asked for some rather outrageous looks, for which we used, among other unique approaches, datamosh techniques. She kicked off a wild run in Chicago at Lollapalooza, and fans went crazy.
Ignacio Rosenberg brought us in to create material for Karol G’s Bitchota tour, for which we made twenty pieces of content. Paul and Jeri from House of Sam also asked us to create a visual backdrop for Christina Aguilera’s 2021 People’s Choice medley performance.
Later that year, for Ozuna’s “La Funka” performance at the VMAs, we were commissioned to make a sequence of an augmented giant teddy bear being picked up by a huge, virtual metal claw that transports the AR bear from behind the onstage screens and across the whole arena. Using Stype tracking cameras and working closely with Trevor Burke, Paul Carlin, and our friends at Blink whilst using Notch and disguise for delivery, we had our first taste of real-time AR on a tremendous show and thoroughly enjoyed the process and response it garnered.
Working closely with Misty Buckley and Sam Seager on Coldplay’s Music of The Spheres tour was another massive highlight for us in 2021. We designed a handful of Notch IMAG looks and show content for a memorable and really striking tour.
The year ended with a remarkable experience in the Saudi Arabian desert in late December at Soundstorm Festival in Riyadh. Led and designed by Alex Reardon, we were tasked with making thirty different Notch looks that directors and VJs across all of the festival’s stages could use to enhance the many performances. Tom also directed the Down Beast stage and had a vast video canvas to play with for various amazing bands. Seeing the faces of young crowds of people who had never witnessed live music before, let alone on the scale and production levels that Soundstorm offers, was an unforgettable experience.
2022
After kickstarting the year working with Blink on six Notch-based looks for Kacey Musgraves to support her album, Star Crossed, we began work with Imagine Dragons on the seventeen-date North American tour promoting Mercury — Act 1. We created Notch IMAG looks for the entire show and had the pleasure of working once more alongside Mitchell Schellenger.
Meta then tasked us with creating XR effects for the Foo Fighters’ Super Bowl after-show, which played in virtual reality inside the Meta Quest VR headset and as a regular stream on Facebook. They were an amazing band to work with, but it was one of the last performances the band made before the unfortunate passing of Taylor Hawkins. He genuinely was among the nicest band members we’ve ever had the chance to experience: kind to everyone around him and a treasure to the music industry.
We proceeded to work on Westlife’s The Wild Dreams tour alongside our friends at Black Skull Creative and Lauv’s All For Nothing tour, for which the fantastic team at Blink brought us in to oversee Notch tech integration on his North American run.
The pandemic hit us hard once more for the cancelled J Balvin Tour. Working with the ever-talented Ash and Ant of The Squared Division alongside Blink, we helped create some fascinating Notch looks for the show. Two days before the show was set to leave for the road, a COVID outbreak within the crew stopped the whole tour in its tracks. It was devastating after all the hard work everyone had put into it.
Muse then came back to us for the start of their Will Of The People tour, beginning with a European festival run with Tom as ever at the helm to direct the show. For the first time in decades, the band decided to have all video attention and efforts placed on their IMAG show rather than upstage screens with content. We created a very camera-focused show that we threw in the Notch “kitchen sink” with fantastic results. It was a lot of fun to ratchet up the rock looks that Notch can deliver with virtual cracking screens and fire emanating off the band’s clothing.
The highlight of our year, without question, was the 2022 VMAs, for which MTV tasked us with handling all the broadcast design, house show content, and AR scenes, as well as show content for Nicki Minaj, Jack Harlow, Khalid, and Marshmello. We even took footage of Johnny Depp, filmed in Paris, to create an AR version of the VMAs’ Moon Man!
On the job, we used Notch across the board, and it performed remarkably well. We worked closely with the creative department of Paul Carlin, Trevor Burke, and Harriet Cuddeford, as well as a plethora of talented teams and individuals. It was a very gratifying experience.
2023
Already, so much has happened for us this year. We’ve worked on Muni Long’s Tonight Show performance and added AR effects to a Lang Lang concert at The Royal Albert Hall.
Silent Partners have had a busy year with Harry Styles and P!nk tours going back-to-back; we’ve been very fortunate to be part of it all. Gabriel Coutu-Dumont and his exceptionally talented team at Silent Partners brought Hidden Road in to add live camera looks, all of which we ran through Notch. The versatility of the software allowed us to provide elaborate looks and, at times, very refined and subtle textures to the camera looks for two fantastic tours.
We have also enjoyed being part of Muse’s tour, which has continued across US and European stadiums. Throughout this run, we’re making a documentary on the band and their relationship with their fans. Hopefully, this will be released late this year or early in 2024.
The latest show we’re just coming off the back of is The Jonas Brothers’ Remember This Tour. Alex Reardon and Silent House commissioned us to accentuate the camera-heavy tour, which covers the band’s whole back catalogue of albums.
Overall, we are determined to continue our journey in such a wonderful industry over the forthcoming years and among so many talented people who make it what it is. Thanks very much in part to Notch, we can create and provide video looks that hopefully millions of people worldwide enjoy and which enhance so many incredible performances.
A special thanks to Hidden Road Studios for taking the time to sit down and talk to us about their journey as a studio. You can follow them on Instagram and Vimeo.
