youtube music awards 2015 - Welcome sequence
Purpose of the Project
In 2015 YouTube reinvented its Music Awards. Gone was the stage show; instead, YouTube dropped 50 winning artists and 13 new music videos simultaneously. To open the event, they needed something bold enough to reset perceptions and signal that YouTube was redefining what an award show could be. The answer was “Welcome to the YouTube Music Awards 2015”: a short film built from light itself, introducing millions of viewers to the event and marking the world’s first showcase of Laser Banding, created through weeks of collaboration between Autofuss and PRECISION.
Creative Vision and Process
YouTube commissioned San Francisco studio Autofuss, led by director Tarik Abdel-Gawad, to create an environment that felt both physical and digital. In a dark, empty studio, the team used high-powered lasers, haze, and a robot-mounted camera to build tunnels, walls, and ribbons of light that people could move through and activate.
PRECISION and Autofuss spent weeks exploring how to exploit the quirks of scanning and shutter sync to invent what became known as Laser Banding—capturing ribbons and planes of floating lasers directly in camera. Actors and dancers were filmed inside this environment, moving through the programmed light structures in real time. The result was an “infinitely reconfigurable space” made only of lasers and fog, recorded practically without CGI.
Goals and Outcomes
For YouTube, the goal was to relaunch the YTMA as innovative and digital-first. The laser opener became the attention-grabbing statement piece that embodied that ambition. For the creative team, it was about exploiting a technical limitation to create a new artform. Laser Banding debuted as a new visual language, both experimental and cinematic.
Reception and Legacy
Vice’s Creators Project called the opener a video that used “retro laser technology in a totally new way,” predicting that “a dark room filled with laser holograms” looked like the future. Stash Magazine and Pangolin highlighted how the project invented a new visual vocabulary. Fans were intrigued by the hologram-like imagery, many assuming it was CGI—only to learn it was real lasers captured live.
At the time, few outside the industry realized they were watching the birth of a new artform. In hindsight, the project is widely credited as the public debut of Laser Banding—a technique later seen in high-profile pieces we’ve created, from Childish Gambino to Metallica. The YTMA video showed what was possible and set a benchmark for how lasers could be used not just as effects, but as storytelling.
Outcome
“Welcome to the YouTube Music Awards 2015” succeeded on every front. It gave YouTube a futuristic identity for its reimagined show, generated excitement around the campaign, and introduced the world to Laser Banding—a technique that turned empty space into architecture and helped launch a new visual language for music.
SEE IT LIVE
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