Cercle is a fascinating French music company founded by Derek Barbolla that curates events and festivals on a global scale. Its latest project is a very ambitious immersive event called Cercle Odyssey, which is traveling from Mexico City to Los Angeles and Paris. It is a 360-degree concert/installation that looks like a breathtaking event that one must truly experience. A rotating roster of world-class electronic artists play in front of wide-format images projected onto the walls of the venues.
Neels Castillon was the creative mind behind these massive images, which represent the connection between art and nature loosely set to the timeless story of Homer’s The Odyssey. Castillon recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length]
Tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved in filmmaking.
I started making short films at a very young age. I’m part of the Vimeo generation, where you put your short film on Vimeo, and people from the creative industry take note. I started getting requests to direct music videos and commercials. That’s how I was discovered by RSA. I wanted to do longer formats and experiment with dance and nature, which inspired me.
And that seemed like a perfect fit with what Cercle does.
Yes, it is what connected me with the Cercle team. I did a few videos in which I brought artists into crazy landscapes, and they did their thing, steaming live in nature, so we have been watching each other for a long time.
They approached me to direct this project, the film part. We want to celebrate nature’s beauty, and we find it very interesting as a location to explore. We are the internet generation, and you can see these things on YouTube, but our goal here was to capture them for the big screen because we want to immerse people in these places we love in 360.
What was the pitch?
Derek Barbolla, founder of Cercle, called me and said, “I have this idea. It’s a massive project, and I want to bring artists into a massive monumental room surrounded by a big screen. I want you to film a landscape that will be immersive.” I had to think about it because, as a filmmaker, I want to do creative things, not produce stock footage. The Odyssey inspired this film, and I told Derek, if you want to work with me, there has to be a story we are telling and creatively ambitious. I spent weeks writing. I rewatched Ron Fricke’s Samsara, which is a meditative feature film.
Ron Fricke is great; he shot Koyaanisqatsi and directed films like Baraka…
I wanted the film to be expansive but not take up all the space. The artist in the middle of the stage is most important. A film like Samsara is a universal story; it is the story of humanity.
A few years ago, I was at an art installation in Japan with walls that changed color. I loved this as an emotional device and chose four colors: gold for sand in the desert, white for ice, deep blue for the ocean, and green for the forest.
So, we chose the locations based on this idea: to create monochromatic atmospheres that would immerse the people who attend the show in these colors. When blended with the lights and the music, there are endless possibilities.
Did you know who was gonna be playing?
In the beginning, there was a big list of names. We had to wait for confirmation, but we knew we had some names locked, like Ben Böhmer and Monolink. Then we had a crazy meeting with Moby. The others came later, like Empire of the Sun and Black Coffee.
It’s a concept that has never been done. Most of the time, we struggled to explain the idea to people. They wanted to do all the artistic direction, but we said no. When I started shooting, we showed the footage to the artists, they understood what we were going for.
And these are primarily electronic artists…
Yes, it’s mostly electronic music, but more so cinematic. All the music we chose has a cinematic quality that pairs well with the images. When I watch the footage of Moby playing, I get a different feeling from Max Richter. It’s an artistic experience.
It reminds me of when they screen silent films and have a band or DJ score it… Talk about your approach to actually filming this. Have you ever worked with a 360 camera before, and what was the learning curve like on that?
I did a piece for a Museum in Paris with a 360-degree camera, so I had some experience. It was hard to adjust to the camera’s inability to frame shots, but yes, I learned ways to work with it. I would shoot left and right separately.
I also used a RED 8K camera that gives a 360-degree feeling. I hired two young engineers and a drone pilot, and they made the first 360-degree FVP drone. We built it ourselves. It has five cameras: front, back, left, right, and the roof. We were able to fly really close to the locations. It’s going to be like a rollercoaster at the concerts.
How long is the actual completed film?
Each concert will be an hour and a half, and the film is nine hours long. We captured almost a full-length movie at every location.
Let’s talk about the cast and the approach to performing…
There is acting, but you don’t hear their words. It’s like a silent movie. We had Kristián Mensa, who I have worked with before. He’s from the Czech Republic. Mahamat Fofana, who is French and African, has a background in the Circus. Alanna Archibald, who is from Los Angeles, is a fantastic actress. Also Wan-Lu Yu from Taiwan.
They are from all over and in remote locations. I wanted this to be super universal. It’s the story of Ulysses. The gods condemned him to go far away from home, so the actors are far away from their homes in different climates.
And there’s also dancing… Who was your choreographer?
I worked with Fanny Sage, a French choreographer who is part of the Peeping Tom Dance Company. She has extensive experience in contemporary dancing and filmmaking. I chose her because she has a great sense of cinematic movement. I described emotion, and she translated. Then, we worked on how to film it. We did many rehearsals in Paris, and each scene was prepared in the studio.
Do you have a favorite scene?
The scene I’m the most proud of is called ‘Synchronicity’. We wanted to do something universal, so we imagined the same choreography for the dancers and framed it exactly the same. So when you are at the show, you will see all four dancers in different landscapes doing the same thing on separate screens, producing a crazy effect.
So, what was your workflow like? The post-process…
We were doing post-production for the entire shoot. We had two in-house editors who worked with all of the footage as soon as it came in. It was almost too much footage. The post-production process was very interesting because the experiment was not only on the shoot but also on the edit. I was on set editing at night just to see what worked. We worked with Meta and Mathematic Studio. We had VR headsets to see what the footage looked like in 360.
What’s it like being on the other end of this now?
It’s a mixed feeling because the shoot was a one-of-a-kind experience you have had in your life. We had a small crew; the smaller the crew, the more intense the relationships are. We lived the dream for one year, and it was very creative, which I love.
These were amazing places where you don’t get to go if you are not working. I’m half happy it ended because I have no more energy, and I’m depressed because it’s behind me now. What I love is that I can now enjoy the show. It is a great experience.
Cercle Odyssey is now touring with events in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Paris.
