Billie Eilish looks close in 3D images. Very close. You can almost touch the baseball cap that’s on her head backwards. ,,I’m not your friend, Or anything, damn. You think that you’re the man. I think, therefore, I am”she sings in ‘Therefore I Am’. Her microphone is near your nose. Cameras skim and zoom over heads, past outstretched arms and filming cellphones. Is there actually anyone in the room who is not filming?
No. Director James Cameron films artist and audience as if in a modern Droste effect. But that audience also records the artist themselves – often live for those at home – and the artist herself, the American superstar Billie Eilish, also holds her own camera for images on gigantic screens. Watching and viewing merge into one visual loop.
The concert film Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) feels like an intersection of pop culture and film history. That has everything to do with the man behind the camera: James Cameron, visionary director of films like Titanic and Avatarwho unleashed his latest 3D technology here on Billie Eilish’s big tour last year. He filmed everything during her four shows in Manchester in July.
James Cameron and Billie Eilish.
@HENRYHWU
It is not the first time that a famous director has taken care of Eilish. Robert Rodriguez previously did this for the partly animated musical film Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles. The collaboration with James Cameron – his wife is friends with Billie Eilish’s mother – now mainly produces a hyper-realistic concert registration. And from the very first moment: above all, an ultimate fan experience.
Huge LED cube
The show’s opening, “Chihiro,” is spectacular: a huge LED cube above the stage turns transparent, revealing Eilish within. A little later ‘Bury a Friend’ swirls through the room, heavy and menacing. Cameron’s cameras are next to it, below it and on top of it.
The stage in the middle of the arena is shaped like a horizontal digital eight, with the audience surrounding it on all sides. Eilish’s band is divided into the ‘holes’ of those eight. With moving cameras on rails everywhere and a floor that is also a screen, only the singer herself moves physically across the mega stage.
Billie Eilish sings while lying on her back.
© 2026 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Between songs, the film gives us a look behind the scenes, hours before the show starts. What you see is something completely different than in the music documentary The World’s a Little Blurry (2021). That was a slow, breathtaking film without frills by RJ Cutler, which showed Eilish at home as a brand new, young star and how she dealt with the overwhelming success at the age of seventeen, including all the fears.
She wears her loose clothing in opposition to the image that female artists should allow themselves to be sexualized
Eilish is now 24 years old and an established name, who with ten Grammy Awards has a decisive and unique place in pop music. She thinks about her show in detail: from camera angles to audience experience. That autonomy runs like a thread through the film. In the conversations she has with director and producer Cameron – he can clearly be seen with a camera on his shoulder – it is often about her growth as a self-confident artist. But her loose clothing also bears witness to this, which she wears in resistance to the image that female artists must allow themselves to be sexualized.
Eilish is always close by while singing. She is an energetic sensation live, the 3D technology literally pushes her into the audience, within a few centimeters of the viewer. Initially this makes an impression, but the effect wears off surprisingly quickly. The technology emphasizes proximity, but rarely adds a new layer to the experience. In fact, with rapid camera movements, the image can become slightly disorienting or even tiring. And is singing along and dancing, which Eilish really hopes for her fans in the cinemas, still fun with 3D glasses on? Cameron, the one with Avatar showed how 3D can enrich a world, seems less interested in imagination than in registration.
Oxytocin moments
Moving moments are in the little things. Eilish’s shins are taped, just like her sprained ankle. She FaceTimes her singing coach for exercises. There is no fancy make-up artist involved: she does her show make-up herself and knows exactly how to make her eyes pop with an extra line of kohl.
Also disarming is how she cares for her crew: through animal shelter organizations she arranges ‘oxytocin moments’ when her team can cuddle with dogs, as an antidote to the loneliness of tour life. Cameron is impressed: “I will also do this on my film sets.”
And her fans also lean on Eilish, her music offering support and helping them through mental difficulties. At a time when many young people are struggling with their mental health, Eilish serves as a candid guide. Her songs make them cry. Long and hard. During the ballad ‘Wildflower’, about love, guilt and confusion after a relationship, they fall into each other’s arms. You want to wipe the tears from their cheeks. This sadness in 3D looks almost too vulnerable.
You want to wipe the tears from their cheeks. This sadness in 3D looks almost too vulnerable
When Eilish sits cross-legged on stage during “When the Party’s Over” and asks for silence, the arena goes silent. She builds up the harmonies live and ends up lying on her back, singing to the ceiling. It is one of the most beautiful musical images of the film. Also beautiful: how she floats on a swing above the audience. Or is launched during the exciting ‘Guess’, with Charli XCX on the screens. And when brother Finneas unexpectedly (he is missing from her tour for the first time due to his own concerts) appears on stage for their beautiful ‘Ocean Eyes’, the discharge is palpable.
Billie Eilish in the movie.
© 2026 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Yet the 3D experience remains convincing to varying degrees. Over time you get used to it and the effect adds little extra dimension. You mainly see what the singer sees: how thousands of eyes remain focused on her in her strong show. Intense.
Above all, it makes this concert film a luxurious fan experience. A day in the life of an artist at her peak, captured with technical perfection and carried by her own – sincere – emotion. As Eilish hangs out of the tour bus after the show to say goodbye to her fans, the simple question is: was all that tech necessary to get so close?
Also read
Megastar Billie Eilish makes a screaming Ziggo Dome full of lasers and flamethrowers feel even more intimate
