Magic, they say, is built on defying perception. How true! Especially in Las Vegas, the desert oasis that has been known to bend reality in unimaginable directions.

A special kind of magic was indeed in the air on The Strip February 5th when charismatic superstar Blake Shelton kicked off his six-show residency at The Colosseum Caesars. But the multi-Grammy winner’s engaging performance wasn’t the only thing spellbinding the crowd that evening, Also enchanting the 4,500 lucky fans in attendance was an immersive production by Bob Bonniol of MODE Studios and lighting designer Steve Cohen.

Like all true forms of magic, their work captivated the imagination by…. well, to be honest, playing a few tricks with perception. Let’s begin with the stage itself! There’s a reason why, this casino’s theatre has played host to so many famous residencies. It’s stage design makes it possible to showcase large productions in what in reality is an intimate setting.

“The Colosseum is an amazing and interesting venue,” said Bonniol. “Its proscenium opening is fairly epic, wide enough to allow for arena scale in a venue that is ultimately very cozy. We wanted to be able to take advantage of that scale with our set and lighting rig, but also have the audience always aware of Blake and pointed at where he was.”

Engaging the crowd with his level of production in this setting, while still keeping them focused squarely on the performer on stage was no easy task, but the production team for Shelton’s residency was able to accomplish this in brilliant fashion, not with “magic” alone, but also through artistic vision, talent effort and a lot of collaboration.

Bonniol credits the collaborators who worked with him and Cohen, including the MODE Studios team, LDs Felix Peralta and Scotty O’Connor, video programmer David Leonard, and his daughter Izzy, who assisted Peralta, with making the production click. Also contributing to the design were the two dozen CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-blinders, which like the rest of the rig, were supplied by 4Wall Entertainment.

“We used the Color STRIKE M units to define the borders of the band’s playing area,” said Bonniol. “This was critical to helping us achieve the level of focus we wanted on the artist on stage in terms of color and relative brightness. The virtual set architecture was also arranged to frame that space and always encourage the audience to see the star.”

The production team worked some magic on the stage deck too, dramatically altering its appearance throughout the 90-minute show to reflect the story being told through Shelton’s music and the video walls. At times, they even made the Color STRIKE Ms along with other fixtures on the deck and risers seemingly disappear.

“We kept the crafted wood feel on stage, but reduced the levels a little,” explained Bonniol. “Making the fixtures in the deck package disappear was a little sleight of hand. Since the rear screen extends to the floor and also up into the light rig above, we always worked to make the real floor package blend into the content.”

“So, when we wanted to make them go away, we made the content backdrop more shadowy, and then literally tilted the strikes to face upstage, so the side, facing the audience was black,” he continued. “Then POOF… They were gone! How do you do that? Ha! Again, we had to adapt to the theatrical proximity of the whole audience in this venue.”

Working on this canvas, the production team created an array of evocative looks, most of them drawn from Shelton’s wildly successful “Back To The Honkey Tonk” tour of two years ago, which were based on Cohen’s vision of creating a sense that the audience was joining the star in his barn for their own honkey tonk.

“We collaborated on fleshing out some of the spaces in that barn for the residency,” said Bonniol. “We scaled elements from that tour like the Neon Museum look for ‘Hillbilly Bone,’ and the amazing, serene space up in the rafters for ‘God Gave Me You’ for this residency, in addition to adding some new spaces.

“Of course, the tour had a backdrop that used a massive semi-translucent wall with a big array of lighting behind it,” continued Bonniol. “At Caesars we didn’t have that, so we had to create the additional backdrop looks to tie it all together in a theatrical way. We used Midjourney and OpenAI’s SORA to create some of the new virtual set looks and also update some of the textural animations.”

The end result was, to put it in a single word, stunning! Among the many standout looks in the show were those for the song “Home,” that featured a four minute extended camera move across an “outdoor” setting at night. “It is one of my favorites,” said Bonniol. “It’s an unreal scene that makes the audience feel like the whole stage is slowly moving across a moonlit ranch right up to a farmhouse — it is just magical.”