Homer Comes to Hollywood: Director Neels Castillon & Cercle Bring Immersive Odyssey to LA

Cercle Odyssey, the first of its kind, epic 360-degree immersive nomad concert installation is coming to the LA Convention center on May 7, featuring performances by Moby, Paul Kalkbrenner, Empire of the Sun, The Blaze and Black Coffee. Cercle Odyssey is a series of “nomadic” concerts staged in giant performance spaces in different cities using 29 state-of-the-art projectors, creating a 360° film panorama across five immense screens that are up to 40 feet high and 180 feet long. Each night a different music act performs on a stage surrounded by the visuals, which are also different each night for each performance.

One of the key artists behind this extraordinary spectacle of technology and sound is the Ridley Scott Associates filmmaker Neels Castillon, who spent the past year travelling around the world shooting the breathtaking visuals and helping harness the technology that makes it all possible. Odyssey was created by Paris-based Cercle and its visionary Founder and Creative Director Derek Barbolla. It is a towering celebration of art, music and nature, and the effort that went into conceiving and mounting the event is as epic as the experience itself. 

Based on characters from Homer’s epic The Odyssey, Castillon, his cast and crew embarked on an odyssey of their own, shooting around the world in the Namib Desert, Iceland, Polynesia and South America where actor/dancers reinterpreted classic scenes from the book. Castillon and his Paris-based studio Motion Palace produced the film, shooting the visuals in 8K, creating a 20-hour film divided into 40 scenes, designed to play seamlessly across the five massive screens (150 terabytes—enough for several feature films). 

Castillon filmed on the RED raptor full-format camera using anamorphic lenses, and to deliver a 360-degree perspective, he and his team invented a 5-axis FPV drone camera that represents a major breakthrough in aerial filming technology. For pre-visualization, they partnered with Meta, using Meta Quest headsets to edit content across the five-screen setup. Paris-based VFX studio Mathematics built the entire editing suite within the Meta headset.

Odyssey represents a significant technical and logistical achievement. Not only do the film projections create a visually stunning experience - with colors tied thematically to the film’s different exotic locations - that rivals LED methods, the projectors can be transported and make it possible for the show to go on tour and go nomad, which is difficult to impossible for LED installations that tend to be sedentary and permanent.

For more information about Cercle Odyssey, including a schedule of performances please visit: https://odyssey.cercle.io/