Neels Castillon on His Epic Global Shoot for Cercle Odyssey and Selling Moby on the Project

The immersive concert experience hits L.A. in May

Director Neels Castillon and his team from Paris-based creative studio Motion Palace have been traveling the globe for the last year shooting in breathtaking natural locales ranging from Iceland to French Polynesia.

And while he has been posting behind-the-scenes footage on his Instagram account, Castillon has been rather mysterious about it, sparking considerable curiosity among his followers.

Finally able to talk about his adventure in filmmaking, the director reveals that he has been capturing the visuals for Cercle Odyssey, a nomadic, large-scale 360-degree immersive concert experience. It was conceptualized by Derek Barbolla, the founder and creative director of Cercle, a music company headquartered in Paris.

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The event visits the L.A. Convention Center on May 7 and will feature performances by Moby, Paul Kalkbrenner, Empire of the Sun, The Blaze and Black Coffee. Each act will perform on a stage in the center of a structure surrounded by 8K projection screens playing Castillon’s mesmerizing film, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Concertgoers are encouraged to move about to take in the experience from different perspectives.

Castillon, who is represented globally by Ridley Scott Creative Group and has shot ads for Meta-owned Supernatural, among others, says the installation “delivers an overwhelming sensory experience that blurs the lines between live performance, cinema and immersive technology.”

Here, he dives into the making of the film and talks about how he convinced legendary electronic artist Moby to take part in the project.

MUSE: What did you hope to achieve with this film?

Neels Castillon: With Cercle Odyssey, I wanted to revisit the myth of Ulysses in a modern, poetic way by casting four different performers to embody him: two women and two men. In the original myth, Ulysses is cursed to wander the Earth before finding his way home. That idea of a journey—both physical and emotional—became the heart of the film.

I imagined four visual worlds, each tied to a color and a landscape: gold for the desert, white for the Arctic, blue for the ocean and green for the jungle. We shot in French Polynesia, Iceland, Namibia, and South America—places where nature could carry the story.

Visually, the project is inspired by Samsara, 2001: A Space Odyssey and James Turrell’s work. The goal was to create a sensory journey, where the story is felt more than told.

If you had to choose one location as the most awe-inspiring, which one would it be?

The forest in the Marquesas Islands. That connection wasn’t just visual, it was emotional. Local guides brought us to a sacred site that’s normally closed to the public—a hidden valley beneath a massive waterfall. It took us four hours of hiking through thick jungle, in pouring rain, to get there. I was completely exhausted, feeling like I had nothing left. But just as we reached the clearing, the sun broke through the storm clouds and lit up the entire valley, turning the rain into golden light.

Our actress, Wan Lun, began her choreography right there, framed by this ancient and towering landscape. It felt surreal. I never imagined we’d end up filming the most powerful scene of the entire project that day.

We also filmed during a thunderstorm in Bolivia, high on the Altiplano at 5,000 meters above sea level. Lightning was striking the mountain just behind us. It was absolutely breathtaking.

You were instrumental in getting Moby to participate in this project. How did you get him to say yes?

Derek kindly invited me to meet Moby backstage during his concert in Paris. We had just 20 minutes to pitch the project and get him excited about it. I think we approached it with a lot of passion—and probably a bit of naïveté, too. I’m a huge fan of his music. His was actually the first CD single I ever bought as a teenager.

Moby is deeply passionate about film, technology and art. So, our 20-minute pitch turned into an hour-long conversation. And by the end of it, he said, “Let’s go.”

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You are an experienced filmmaker, but what did you learn while working on this ambitious project?

This project was an artistic deep dive for me—a chance to explore, learn and grow in so many directions.

I spent a lot of time studying imagery and storytelling, searching for ways to create a genuine sense of immersion for the audience. I explored the language of large-scale screens, learning how to design visuals that hold power and emotion even at monumental scale.

I also ventured into the world of VR, using it as a tool to simulate scenes and test ideas in a virtual space before bringing them to life. It allowed me to pre-visualize the flow of the show in a way I’d never experienced before.

Throughout the process, I wrote and developed countless ideas, refining the narrative and the emotional arc of the experience. I dove into the technical side of things as well—understanding projection techniques and how to integrate them into a live show without losing the human connection at the core of the performance.

But more than anything, I learned how to rally a large, multidisciplinary team around a single creative vision. I saw from the inside how an event of this scale is built—brick by brick, cue by cue, moment by moment. The backstage complexity was both humbling and inspiring.

Do you find that concert-goers increasingly expect something more high-level and immersive like this?

We’re living in a time where so much content is consumed instantly, on a phone, almost effortlessly. So, if you want people to show up in person, you have to create something truly extraordinary.