How Dead & Company Got Their Sphere Splendor: Treatment Studio Head on Creating Spectacular Visuals for the Band’s Vegas Residency

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If you like what you see when you check into Las Vegas’ Sphere for the residency by Dead & Company — and most attendees have come away raving, Deadheads and newbies alike — you can credit much of that to the efforts of Treatment Studio, the creative agency charged with executing the visuals for the venue’s 160,000- square-foot wrap-around screen for the three-month run.

Treatment’s Sam Pattinson is the show’s executive producer but, above and beyond that, shares creative director credit with Dead & Company band member John Mayer, after a decade’s worth of collaborations with Mayer on the singer-guitarist’s solo tours.

Putting together the design for Dead & Company’s residency has been a short, not-so-strange trip. Pattinson, who co-founded Treatment with Willie Williams, U2’s longtime creative director, says that putting the visuals together was a smooth process, even though they had just six months from start to finish to make it work. (“Finish” may be a misnomer, since Mayer previously told Variety — and Pattinson confirms — that new video pieces will be added even as late as the last couple of weeks of the residency in August.

The group plays its final night there, at least for 2024, on Aug. 10.) After previously catching up with group members Mayer, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart for interviews about the engagement, Variety spoke with Pattinson about what went in to the eye-tickling show. “I think a lot of the portals that we made, even though they’re relatively simple ideas and looks, are very effective,” he says, “with that perspective thing where we trick people into believing what they’re looking at, which is great.