Muni Long on The Tonight Show

Hidden Road Studios linked sound, image, space, and time in an audio-reactive show for Muni Long’s most recent late-night appearance.

Hidden Road Studios worked closely with Muni Long’s creative team, including Jamaica Craft and JR Taylor, to design visuals for the singer’s rendition of “Time Machine” on The Tonight Show, a capstone performance that wrapped up her biggest year yet. From the beginning, the team knew they needed to evoke the feeling of time travel, which presented an opportunity to be endlessly imaginative.

Hidden Road set out to create a never-ending wormhole featuring fast-moving graphic elements linked to the live, performed music. They made sure to strive for a cosmic tunnel that would be striking, powerful, and well-defined without distracting from the talent upfront for the duration of the four-minute song.

As Hidden Road’s Rowan Glenn explained, their team found Notch as useful for pre-rendered material as real-time work. With render times reduced, they could be both flexible and more demanding of the visual components. Because the creative team could share videos with the client quickly and efficiently, they could hone their looks and be particular about artistic decisions.

The team designed everything within Notch to take advantage of the native audio-reactive capabilities. This gave them a fully animated scene affected by the music in real time.