2018 Coachella’s headline act – renowned US rapper Eminem – wowed the massive crowd with a two-hour set, against a highly visual backdrop of an iconic Detroit factory created by Sydney based VFX studio Blackbird.

Eminem’s performance was a cross section of his career, with guest appearances from Dr Dre, Skylar Grey and 50 Cent. Over the course of the show, the factory – Detroit’s Packard building –was constantly in flux, showing its development, decay and futuristic rebuild.

The factory embodies the peak and eminent slow decline of industrialised Detroit, the city where Eminem spent most of his youth and one intrinsically connected to the USA’s music industry. Blackbird created visuals showing the historical arc of this building, with the significance of each artist and their performance providing story beats; guiding the thread of imagery throughout the various renditions of the building.

Only three and a half weeks before Eminem’s Coachella headline performance was Blackbird approached by long time collaborators, Rich Lee & Justin Diener at Drive Studios in LA. Blackbird was to creatively drive and produce all the visuals displayed on a huge, panoramic array of screens behind the artists. Working closely with the team at Trask House (responsible for the physical set design), Blackbird developed a panoramic design, with the stage set with two storey high screens.

In one of their biggest technical feats to date, Blackbird created a master 10K output that was split out to seven screens of various resolutions, creating a single perspective panorama.