CASE STUDY

Hans Zimmer

Live - The Next Level Tour

Worldwide

Collaborators + Partners

About
Client

Hans Zimmer

Year

2025 - 2026

Reach

600k+ Viewers

Context and Brief

We collaborated once again with Hans Zimmer as part of his creative team on ‘The Next Level World Tour’, an epic journey through sound and visuals that transports audiences into the emotion and cinematic worlds of his most iconic scores.

Our journey with Hans Zimmer began at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, where we illuminated Buckingham Palace with visuals celebrating the natural world, a truly remarkable moment introduced by Sir David Attenborough and performed by Celeste.

We reunited soon after for ‘Hans Zimmer and Friends: Diamond in the Desert’, reimagining the world of Interstellar inside Dubai’s vast Al Wasl Dome.

Services

Experience & Show Design

Visual Design

Creative Direction

Project Type

Live Show

Creative
Creative Vision + Art Direction

This time, we wanted to deliver screen visuals to amplify the visual design and draw audiences into the storytelling and spectacle of Hans Zimmer's most iconic scores. To achieve this, we immersed ourselves in each track, exploring its musical character, structure, identity and instrumentation.

These insights were then cross-referenced with Hans’s intentions for each piece, allowing us to build a conceptual bridge between the music, the films and the live visual experience. This conceptual framework became the foundation for a fully synchronised animation, seamlessly integrated with the on-stage performances and lighting design.

The engaging and imaginative worlds Hans creates through his soundscapes consistently demonstrate exceptional artistry and compositional skill. To enhance these worlds, we used the screens in multiple ways: as a lighting tool to add emotion, as an extension of the stage architecture, and as a modular surface to blur the boundaries between physical, digital, video and lighting.

Together, these elements extend the worlds on screen into the audience, making Hans and the performers the protagonists of an epic, immersive narrative.

Technical

From a technical perspective, the show relied on a coordinated system of real-time tools, media-server playback, and automated lighting. 

At the centre of the setup was Pixera’s 4RS ADA server and ROE Emerald LED panels, whose transparency let a lighting rig sit behind the screen and merge with the visuals. A full Unreal Engine previs matched every fixture and rig movement, allowing us to choreograph how lighting and LED media interacted.

With synced triggers, DMX/OSC control, and networked timing across the system, every layer, generative elements, pre-rendered media, and automated lighting ran in complete lockstep throughout the show.

Thanks to

Hans Zimmer
Steve Kofsky
Semmel Concerts
John Featherstone

The Lightswitch team
The entire creative and production team

Team

Tom Bairstow (Executive Producer / Director)
Guy Smith (Art Director & Creative Lead)
Stephanie Way (Producer & Project Lead)
Dan Shufflebotham (Lead Technical Artist & Tech Lead)
Florian Lecoq (Lead Technical Artist & Tech Lead)
Chris Gaughran (Motion Design Director)
Charley Draper (Technical Director)
Dan Richards (Motion Designer)
Kristaps Kazaks (Motion Designer)
Lydia Caplan (Motion Designer)
Ed Brown (Motion Designer)
Luke Heathcote (Technical Artist)

Image Credits

Suzanne Teresa
Hans Zimmer Live
NorthHouse


Testimonials
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Thank you all, you’re the best, and we’re very fortunate to have your art, your creativity and your passion as part of our little show. You are such a lovely, collaborative, creative bunch and a delight to work with - it really was fabulous, and I think we can be very proud of what we created together.

John Featherstone

Lightswitch Design

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Thank you all, you’re the best, and we’re very fortunate to have your art, your creativity and your passion as part of our little show. You are such a lovely, collaborative, creative bunch and a delight to work with - it really was fabulous, and I think we can be very proud of what we created together.

John Featherstone

Lightswitch Design

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Thank you all, you’re the best, and we’re very fortunate to have your art, your creativity and your passion as part of our little show. You are such a lovely, collaborative, creative bunch and a delight to work with - it really was fabulous, and I think we can be very proud of what we created together.

John Featherstone

Lightswitch Design

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Make Art, not content

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Make Art, not content

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© 2024 NorthHouse Films Ltd.