Chronicling Pharrell’s creative mastery through the medium of LEGO

In partnership with Focus Features, Universal, LEGO and Pharrell Williams, plai developed an immersive visual soundscape to bring to life Pharrell’s experience with synesthesia and songwriting.

The movie Piece by Piece tells the story of Pharrell’s incredible creative journey through the medium of LEGO. The key to Pharrell’s creative genius is synesthesia - where the brain relates different senses, so sounds might be experienced as colours, and lyrics might come to life as shapes. Pharrell leveraged this into the incredible music career we have come to know and love.

plai worked to recreate this experience through a soundscape of lights and color. Bespoke LEGO animations developed to represent synesthetic visuals were beatmatched to the song’s lyrics, allowing our audience to experience the movie’s title track in a sensorial playground of music and visuals. Machine learning based face relighting was used to make the user really appear amongst the effects.

The experience was released as a Snap Lens for Pharrell and LEGO fans around the world, and was also included on an AR Mirror which was displayed at the film’s premiere. The lens was a first carousel takeover on the movie’s opening weekend and exceeded all target metrics for engagement and sharing.