Lizzo, winner of the Grammy for recording of the year, is performing this Thursday evening at the Bell Center and the majority of the video content has been designed by Marcella Grimaux and her team at Noisy Head in collaboration with Eltoro, another Montreal studio.
“Lizzo is hot: she sings, she moves… I’m blessed to have participated in this project. »
This Thursday evening, Marcella Grimaux will be at the Bell Center with members of her team. Lizzo finally performs in Montreal; his tour passed through Toronto last October. “I’m feverish,” says the one who produced images for the pop star. It’s like coming home. »
With 26 million subscribers, Lizzo is the musical artist who has accumulated the most views on TikTok in 2022. Lizzo was voted person of the year at the last People’s Choice Awards. We highlighted her demands on the issues of diversity and inclusiveness, whether in terms of ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation or body diversity.
“I don’t know another pop star who isn’t so afraid to upset,” says Marcella Grimaux.
While in Knoxville, Tennessee, two weeks ago, Lizzo filled the stage with drag queens to protest the state’s bill to restrict their presence outside of cabarets.
It is almost an understatement to say that the Special Tour is under the sign of empowerment. You have to see Lizzo on the flute or even soar with her dancers all in roundness and splendor, and remind her audience of the importance of loving each other.
“Last summer, we shot footage in Los Angeles with Lizzo and her Big Grrls,” says Marcella Grimaux. They are so impressive! Lizzo wanted the humans we see on screen to be on stage. »
Lizzo stays close to her values and who she is. ” It is refreshing. It’s good to see the real thing,” boasts Marcella Grimaux, who was born a year before the 35-year-old singer on the same birthday, April 27.
Marcella Grimaux will always remember the first show of the Special Tour given on September 23 in Florida, at Sunrise, at the FLA Live Arena. “Lizzo did something I’ve never seen before. She gathered all the people who worked on her first arena show for a speech. She couldn’t believe she had been there and she promised to remember everyone who was there. It was super emotional. »
Some big names in pop have a front and are on autopilot, but not Lizzo.
Result: A few weeks ago, Marcella Grimaux was back in Los Angeles for some additional filming.
What led Marcella Grimaux to collaborate with Lizzo? By Special Tour director Justin Collie of Nimblist, with whom she worked on Argentine rap star Tiago PZK’s tour.
Marcella Grimaux was the director of Tiago PZK’s show, while for Lizzo, her role and that of her Noisy Head team members was to provide the majority of the video content for her tour in collaboration with the studio (also Montreal). Eltoro.
When she made her debut at GEODEZIK at the turn of the 2010s, video and multimedia content was slowly beginning to integrate into large-scale arena shows when it is almost essential today. She tells us that she filmed images for rising stars of the time, namely Taylor Swift and Katy Perry!
In Quebec, we know Marcella Grimaux for having put her visual signature on the shows of Patrice Michaud and Jonathan Roy, but also Riopelle symphonique and Harmonium symphonique. This is without taking into account the co-directing of the sets of the last two seasons of Star Académie, of the Loud show on the Plains last summer and his work with Marie-Mai and Jean Leloup.
She announces that the show Bébé symphonique, which is being exported internationally after being showered with praise since its first series of performances at the Planetarium, will have a sequel and has just won a jury prize at the Best of Earth.
“What an idea anyway,” says the one who oversaw the multimedia creation of the show.
“The bet was getting the kids ready for naptime, and it works!” », Rejoices the mother of two young children.
Next big assignments: the staging of IAM’s highly anticipated show with the Orchester symphonique de Montréal next fall and those of Argentine male star Abel Pintos with whom she has collaborated for several years. If this name does not mean anything to a Canadian customs officer, it greatly impresses his Argentinian colleagues.
Marcella Grimaux would like to name the members of her Noisy Head team: Daniel Faubert, Olivier Beaudoin and Isabelle Painchaud.
“I could never do all of this without them,” she concludes.
Born to a father from Chicoutimi and an English-speaking mother, Marcella Grimaux grew up in New York. She then studied acting at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Admiring the show Love, she approached Dominic Champagne to finally work with him on the show Paradis perdu. There she met future colleagues from GEODEZIK, which had Jay-Z, Kanye West, P!nk, Justin Timberlake and The Black Keys as clients.
In 2015, 4U2C (“For you to see”) acquired GEODEZIK. Later, Marcella Grimaux worked at Silent Partners before founding the Noisy Head studio in 2019.
