Mötley Crüe 2022 US Stadium Tour

After a nearly two-year delay from the initial scheduled date, Mötley Crüe’s 2022 US Stadium Tour returned in full force with an impressive headliner line-up, sharing the stage with Def Leppard, Poison, Joan Jett, and Classless Act.

This case study explores how LA-based creative agency All Of It Now delivered the world’s most notorious rock band’s US tour in the summer of 2022, successfully pioneering the use of the Disguise gx 3 media server with innovative Notch generative effects such as facial tracking and AI background removal.

The challenge

As the tour featured an incredible line-up of high-calibre artists, each headline act included its own creative and technical brief, with Disguise hardware powering the visuals for each act. So it was really important to get the technical documentation correct for each act as they were running through the Disguise servers.

While the initial technical brief of the show was built around the enhanced capabilities of the new Disguise gx 3 machine, the machine was only introduced halfway through the US tour. Trialing a new machine with new software halfway through the tour was a bold attempt, yet not something unattempted before. AOIN team’s long-standing Disguise experience made them confident to face up to the challenge. The Disguise support team was also on hand to respond quickly to any technical issues, and even joined the team onsite for the server swap. It was Disguise support that gave AOIN the confidence to make the change in the middle of the tour, according to AOIN Co-founder and Executive Producer, Danny Firpo.

The solution

The team debuted the gx 3 at SoFi stadium in Los Angeles, and they did it in style. To showcase the true potential of the machine, the team took over the massive Infinity Screen in the middle of the stadium - an impressive piece of video engineering, with inner and outer screens wrapped around in 360 degrees.

AOIN also used some of the new background removal effects from Notch, which were very performance-heavy, but ensured an important level of control for some effects. They also used Notch’s UVW pass feature for Saints of LA, which featured flythroughs of a huge cyberpunk inspired city, with Notch-effected IMAG in the city billboards. “We could not have been able to render the city backgrounds in the level of cinematic quality without the power of the gx 3.”

Due to the earlier start of the show, the technical prep had to be compressed ahead of each show, which ultimately meant that the show had to be really well pre-programmed every night. As the IMAG vendor was regionalised, the screen size would change based on each city’s venue, Firpo explains, which meant having to re-program elements of the show for every single city the band played in. Disguise’s pre-vis tools were essential here, allowing the team to handle all the show programming ahead of time, according to each screen size.