PDX—NYC
Sing Street is a charming movie turned Broadway musical about an 80’s Dublin teenager who forms a band to impress a girl. The mostly teenage cast was set for their theatrical debut when the world went dark. Stuck at home, we decided to help them bring Broadway to broadband. All for charity. Along with the help of Smuggler and Henry-Alex Rubin, we didn’t just create a 360-campaign, but the show itself—from the production design to surprise guests to the way the story unfolds across Zoom rectangles.
Our show pulled in $310,924 in only 30 minutes, that's $10,000 every minute for Broadway Cares and the New York City Mayor’s Fund. An enormous sum by Broadway standards and nearly as much money as Hamilton made in box office sales opening weekend. Nearly 5,000 people tuned in live, a total five times the seat capacity of the show's scheduled Broadway theater during a full house.
The pandemic made it impossible to deliver props and costumes to our cast in time for the shoot, so we had to get inventive, using AR Lenses for makeup and set elements. Even if the cast members couldn’t be together, we still had them interacting with each other on Zoom, using grid play and full-screen transitions to innovate storytelling. And we ensured the cast could seamlessly play instruments and sing in real time in HD.
The musical pays homage to the New Wave era and has an overall Duran Duran aesthetic. On opening night, we decided to deliver the ultimate surprise to the cast—inviting John Taylor and Nick Rhodes to perform live.
