NOAH KAHAN’S WE’LL ALL BE HERE FOREVER TOUR

For Noah Kahan’s We’ll All Be Here Forever tour, The Playground worked with Foundations Management to build a stunning show paying homage to the singer’s home state of Vermont. Production Designers Sooner Routhier, who also hails from the Green Mountain State, and Corinne Merolla used scenic design, visual storytelling, and real-time graphics to achieve their vision.

As their main visual motif informing lighting and video design, The Playground drew from Vermont’s “five” seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall, and the transitory “stick season” referenced in Kahan’s hit song). For “Northern Attitude,” they made snow fall; for the finale, they did the same with autumn leaves; in acoustic-oriented moments, they dressed the stage as a typical northeastern living room. The creative team used three LED walls resembling local Vermont mountains like Jay Peak and Camel’s Hump, adding macrame soft goods resembling a birch tree forest Routhier recalled from her childhood.

The team brought on Visual Endeavors to create nostalgic effects comprising filmic textures with a slew of stocks, LUTs, grain patterns, colour palettes, and double exposures unique to each song’s content. The Visual Endeavors team, led by Notch Designer Aron Altmark, used Notch’s Virtual Background feature to cut out Kahan’s figure and allow for more creative compositing.

As Altmark explains, “Notch was very useful in achieving an intricate 2D compositing workflow wherein each effect had one or two texture loops integral to its appearance.” They used the disguise gx2c as their media server and collaborated with Michael Hankowsky of FragmentNine, who helped with sequencing and overall control.

Additional press coverage:

The Huntington News, Beyond the Stage Magazine.