Bringing a Season vividly to life

Every Brandenburg concert tells a different story, and for Season 2027, we wanted our creative campaign to do the same.

For the fifth consecutive season, we've collaborated with Sydney-based creative agency Collider Studio to bring our musical world to life. The result is a dreamlike journey through extraordinary Australian landscapes, where Brandenburg musicians appear suspended in time, surrounded by swirling colour and otherworldly scenery.

But there's more to these images than meets the eye. Every landscape, every musician and every movement began with photography, brought together using an experimental digital technique that blurs the boundaries between photography, painting and animation.

We sat down with Collider's Creative Director and Co-Founder, Andrew van der Westhuyzen, to discover the inspiration behind the campaign, how it all came together and why, after five years, there's still plenty of room to surprise each other.

When Collider first partnered with the Brandenburg in 2022, the agency helped establish a refreshed visual identity that celebrated the orchestra's traditional roots while embracing a contemporary approach to storytelling.

Five seasons later, that philosophy remains at the heart of the relationship.

"Every year when we sit down to think about how to express the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, I try and keep the same key mantras in place that we developed when we rebranded the company in 2022," Andrew explains.

Rather than establishing a particular visual style and repeating it each year, the creative team approaches every new season with fresh eyes. The music itself, together with Artistic Director Paul Dyer's vision for the year ahead, provides the starting point.

Over time, the relationship has developed into one built on creative freedom and a shared willingness to experiment.

"There's a beautiful shorthand that comes from the trust we're given to put our ideas forward. Nothing is off the table."

For Season 2027, that freedom would take the team somewhere entirely new.

The initial inspiration came from an intriguing suggestion from Paul Dyer. He wanted the musicians to feature prominently in the campaign, but without their instruments. Rather than capturing them in performance, he imagined them simply being present.

It was an unusual starting point for a campaign celebrating an orchestra, and one that immediately captured Andrew's imagination.

Musicians might be responsible for creating extraordinary movement through sound, but when performing, they're often confined to a remarkably small physical space. Andrew was fascinated by this contrast between the energy of the music and the relative stillness of the people creating it.

This observation became the foundation of the campaign.

Each musician would appear suspended in a moment, almost like the subject of a painted portrait. Around them, the world could move, transform and dissolve, carrying the audience from one musical experience to the next.

"These solo frozen moments felt like a series of tableaus to move through, like floating through a dream."

The result is a collection of surreal visual worlds in which the musicians become the still point amid an ever-changing landscape.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the campaign is how it was actually created.

Despite appearances, our musicians weren't transported to remote cliffs, mysterious canyons or lush rainforests for an elaborate location shoot. In fact, they never had to leave the Brandenburg's Sydney offices.

Instead, Collider used an experimental digital technique called 3D Gaussian Splatting, which transforms photographic imagery into three-dimensional environments.

The process involves capturing numerous images and using their spatial relationships to create clouds of colour in three-dimensional space. These clouds can then be combined and manipulated to reconstruct environments and subjects.

While the technology is typically used to achieve realistic digital recreations, Collider deliberately took it in the opposite direction.

By manipulating the fidelity of the imagery, Andrew and his team developed a softer, more impressionistic aesthetic. The resulting environments feel almost painted, with colours and textures dissolving into one another.

The musicians were photographed separately in a rehearsal room at the Brandenburg's Sydney offices. Each held carefully considered poses for extended periods while the team captured the imagery needed to create their three-dimensional representations.

Meanwhile, Collider ventured across New South Wales to photograph a variety of natural environments, from dramatic sandstone cliffs and narrow canyons to lush rainforests, all within a day's drive of Sydney.

These two sets of imagery were then brought together digitally, allowing the musicians to inhabit extraordinary landscapes without ever physically setting foot in them.

The approach also gave Collider the freedom to experiment with scale, atmosphere and movement in ways that would have been difficult to achieve through conventional filming.

The finished images might look like elaborate cinematic productions, but at their heart, they're an intricate combination of still photographs.

One of the defining characteristics of every Brandenburg season is its musical variety. Season 2027 is no exception, with six concerts offering distinctly different experiences.

For Collider, the challenge was to give each concert its own visual personality while ensuring the campaign still felt like one continuous journey.

The answer lay in colour, landscape and movement.

Each visual world was developed through carefully selected locations, wardrobe styling and colour palettes. Some environments feel warm and almost scorched, while others are cooler, softer and more ethereal.

But the transitions between these worlds were just as important as the individual images themselves.

Andrew describes the movement of the camera as being like a bee travelling from flower to flower, carrying the viewer between musicians and their surroundings.

"The music reminded me of an old fairground carousel, so there are a lot of moments where these clouds of colours are simply spinning to the music between performers."

It's this sense of movement that brings the campaign to life. Colours swirl, landscapes dissolve and the audience is carried from one scene to another, almost as though travelling through a series of memories.

The result is a visual journey that reflects the variety of the season while retaining a distinctive creative identity.

Beyond the experimental technology and extraordinary landscapes, there's a much simpler idea at the centre of this year's campaign: the musicians themselves.

For Andrew, the opportunity to continue experimenting after five consecutive season campaigns reflects something important about the Brandenburg and its willingness to embrace new ideas.

"Brandenburg continues to explore bold interpretations of Baroque music and champion new young talents, and our task is to support the expression of that vision in a way that keeps celebrating the music."

That spirit of experimentation has allowed Collider to take the orchestra's visual identity in different directions each year, while maintaining a connection to the music and the people who perform it.

And while the Season 2027 campaign introduces new technology and an ambitious creative approach, Andrew hopes audiences will ultimately take away something much more human.

"We owe it to audiences both new and old to keep trying to surprise them and keep them on their toes. Even old classics can still hold a timeless energy."

For all the extraordinary visual effects, the campaign returns to the musicians who make the Brandenburg what it is.

"I hope one of the main takeaways from the trailer this year is that at the heart of all this are these incredibly talented people, the artists young and old that can stand there and create magic in front of us with old bits of wood, string and metal."

It's a fitting reminder that behind every extraordinary performance, every bold interpretation and every new musical discovery are the people who bring the music to life.

And no matter how far technology allows us to push the boundaries of visual storytelling, nothing quite compares to experiencing those musicians live.

From the first photographs to the finished Season 2027 campaign, discover how Collider brought six extraordinary visual worlds to life in our behind-the-scenes timelapse video.