# Dead & Company: Dead Forever at Sphere

**Customer:** Dead & Company

WEKA Teams with Dead & Company to Power Its Most Ambitious and Immersive Concert Experience Ever

## Results

- **1.5PB** data under management
- **90TB** data per show
- **100GB** network at line-rate speed

The History

## From Soundcheck to Two-Hour Jam Session

When John Mayer discovered the Grateful Dead in 2011, he quickly became one of the band’s biggest fans. Four years later, the original members of ‘The Dead’ reunited to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary. That same year, John invited Bob Weir to perform with him on The Late Late Show. Their soundcheck famously morphed into a two-hour jam session, where the idea for [Dead & Company](https://deadandcompany.com/) was born. In August of 2015, Dead & Company announced their first tour.

The Challenge

## Forever Pushing Boundaries

The Grateful Dead has pushed boundaries since the beginning, a legacy that has continued under the Dead & Company moniker. Deadheads everywhere rejoiced when Dead & Company announced the band would return to the stage with its Dead Forever residency at Sphere in 2024. Developing the technology stack that would underpin what Rolling Stone magazine called “the most dazzling visual show in Grateful Dead history” was no easy feat.

For bands performing at Sphere, the venue pushes the boundaries of what they’ve encountered before and presents unprecedented data management, performance, and scale challenges.

A hallmark of Dead & Company’s concert experiences is its immersive three-dimensional video content, which required significant performance to render and playback at scale for Sphere. The band was also adamant that it would preserve the improvisational nature of its performances, a choice that would further push the limits of the Dead Forever production team’s capabilities. Without time codes for their set, Dead & Company’s creative team had to prepare and manage enough video to transition when necessary during the performance while still maintaining its organic feel.

> WEKA® NeuralMesh™ made working with what were once unthinkable resolutions and file sizes a near-effortless experience. No other solution could prove to be as fast, flexible or reliable.
>
> — Brandon Kraemer, Technical Director for Dead Forever • Dead & Company

The Solution

## A Flexible, High-Performance Technology Platform

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      },
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}
```

To create a show that could run and dazzle at scale on Sphere’s unprecedented canvas, the production team knew they had to bring the right tools to the project, or it would be insurmountable. Producing an experience that ran on a 1.5PB dataset, rendering the enormous files required for high-quality 3D images, and preserving the flexibility necessary for the flow of an experiential show built around musical jam sets without a predetermined order or time limits required a flexible, high-performance technology platform.

```json
{
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  "_type": "customerStoryMedia",
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  "image": {
    "alt": "The Sphere",
    "asset": {
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      "metadata": {
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        },
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      },
      "url": "https://cdn.sanity.io/images/ult5g8gw/production/6b9384fb419967d3cbca79bdcc88139463f4b535-1600x1200.png"
    },
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```

Dead & Company selected WEKA as its Official Technology Partner for its Dead Forever residency at Sphere, using its maintenance-free, plug and play WEKApod to power the show. Running NeuralMesh on the WEKApod appliance effortlessly optimized the processing of enormous datasets at lightning speed, making it a critical component in supporting the show’s pre-production workflow.

> Technology is at its best when it gets out of the way of the creative process, and that is exactly what NeuralMesh did for us at Sphere.
>
> — Brandon Kraemer, Technical Director for Dead Forever • Dead & Company

The Outcome

## A Wildly Immersive Experience Powered by NeuralMesh

```json
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  "_type": "customerStoryMedia",
  "beside": "left",
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    "asset": {
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      "metadata": {
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          "height": 1200,
          "width": 1600
        },
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      },
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    },
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    },
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  },
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```

Working with WEKA, Dead & Company achieved new creative heights with an immersive, multi-dimensional, globally praised extravaganza. More importantly, a band renowned for creating unforgettable experiences for its beloved community of fans combined the best of the Grateful Dead’s decades-long musical legacy with bleeding-edge technology to delight over 20,000 ‘Deadheads’ each night.

```json
{
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  "_type": "customerStoryMedia",
  "image": {
    "alt": "Dead Forever production at Sphere",
    "asset": {
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      "metadata": {
        "dimensions": {
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          "aspectRatio": 1.205020920502092,
          "height": 956,
          "width": 1152
        },
        "lqip": "data:image/png;base64,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"
      },
      "url": "https://cdn.sanity.io/images/ult5g8gw/production/64e53049abd2e47a277ffd16c77a48e28119a07f-1152x956.png"
    },
    "crop": {
      "_type": "sanity.imageCrop",
      "bottom": 0,
      "left": 0.031858463928815285,
      "right": 0.01718861062953815,
      "top": 0.043907733058641756
    },
    "hotspot": {
      "_type": "sanity.imageHotspot",
      "height": 0.9560922669413583,
      "width": 0.9509529254416466,
      "x": 0.5073349266496385,
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  },
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```

NeuralMesh enabled Dead & Company’s production team to render impossibly large video files in record time, unleashing their creativity as they embraced the full scale of the Sphere’s immersive venue to bring their music to life for fans. The WEKApod appliance also functioned as the data hub for the entire project, supporting the post-production pipeline, storing camera records and videos, and providing a centralized system for distributing the live show’s D3 media playback servers.

![Dead Forever at Sphere](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/ult5g8gw/production/83522dd39b50c9941162afa4f9ae1e8bfb20f838-2880x1456.png)

The Outcome

## Supercharging the Production Team's Creativity

```json
{
  "_key": "outcomes-stats",
  "_type": "customerStoryProofPoints",
  "markDefs": null,
  "proofPoints": [
    {
      "context": "With NeuralMesh, Dead & Company could focus on the show’s creative elements rather than the technical logistics of the rendering and delivery pipeline for an enormous data set.",
      "description": "data under management",
      "unit": "PB",
      "value": "1.5"
    },
    {
      "context": "NeuralMesh helped to supercharge the production team’s creativity by enabling its artists to render and encode in minutes instead of hours, supporting a more iterative creative process.",
      "description": "data per show",
      "unit": "TB",
      "value": "90"
    },
    {
      "context": "NeuralMesh made it possible for Dead & Company to push content out across a 100 gig network at actual 100 gig speeds, delivering very big files very fast.",
      "description": "network at line-rate speed",
      "unit": "GB",
      "value": "100"
    }
  ]
}
```

[Download PDF](https://cdn.sanity.io/files/ult5g8gw/production/8521e01510f87ea615c2d1cb76d418ba29e4c351.pdf)