Twenty One Pilots knew they had to go massive for their first official concert movie. So why not film their biggest headlining show to date and have the videographer who has been by their side almost the entire journey behind the camera?
“I can’t believe this is my life,” says Mark Eshleman, the director of the upcoming IMAX concert film Twenty One Pilots: More Than We Ever Imagined, which will opens in theaters worldwide on Thursday (Feb. 26) for a limited run, with exclusive IMAX previews slated to begin on Wednesday (Feb. 25). The group’s longtime videographer/photographer and friend first met the band back when they were playing for 100 people in the basement bar of a club in singer Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
At the time, Joseph liked how Eshleman’s photos captured the emotion of the duo’s shows so much he invited him to move from nearby Dayton into his apartment in Columbus. Flash forward 16 years and those dingy subterranean shows have been swapped out in the film for a sold-out crowd of more than 65,000 Skeleton Clique diehards at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City on the band’s 2024-2025 world tour.
It was the band’s highest-capacity headlining show to date and after visiting IMAX HQ with the pair’s manager to see what the large format could offer them, Eshleman — who has directed dozens of the band’s videos, including some of the key clips in the decade-long Blurryface saga — says they were convinced it was the right call for the expansive vision they had in mind. That ambitious plan included more than 20 cameras placed all around the stadium to maximize the focus on the band and their hardcore fans.
Eshleman made sure to zoom in on those ecstatic fans laughing, crying, jumping, hugging and reaching out to try and lay even just a finger on Dun and Joseph as they wade into the crowd throughout the show, with the Clique’s reactions to their favorite songs playing a huge role in the structure, and emotion, of the two-hour film. While the vibrant, pyro-fueled shots of Estadio GNP from above and from the floor level are breathtaking, Eshleman also wanted the film to give a more intimate look at the special friendship shared by Dun and Joseph.
Those moments come in black-and-white confessional interludes, where the pair sit in the empty, cavernous stadium talking about how mind-blowing it is to have gotten to this point, as well as sharing some of their backstage pump-up routines — Dun’s involves a boxing workout — and butterflies about show day.
Eshleman says that shots of fans are Joseph and Dun’s favorite parts of other band’s live concert films. “Whenever someone takes the time to explore the band, their takeaway is always how emotional and attached the fans are,” he tells Billboard. That’s why, after having watched 21P run through the show more than 30 times before the historic Mexico City gig, Eshleman’s team planted nearly two dozen cameras around the venue in order to catch all the action, on stage, and in the crowd.
Though they had a good sense of where Joseph and Dun would be during the gig based on the meticulous blocking of the show — which took some of the burden off Eshleman’s sprawling team — at one point in the movie Joseph is on stage during the afternoon walk-through and spots a landing at the top of the massive soccer stadium and decides he might like to be up there instead of on the riser already built for him.
“We rehearsed the blocking so much we didn’t have to think about it,” Eshleman says. “And then Tyler looked over and saw those buildings and, of course, wanted to climb that, which was something that was a bit different.”
Joseph and Dun don’t do a ton of in-depth interviews and they keep their private lives mostly out of view, so Eshleman’s fly-on-the-wall moments with them in the car or backstage pull back the curtain in a way he suspects will be thrilling for fans.
“You get the giant, full-color scope of the event and then it goes down to letterbox with a different aspect ratio … I always say the show is from the fan’s perspective and the documentary [footage] is from Tyler and Josh’s perspective,” the director says of the quieter moments where we see some of the worry and anxiety that suffuses Joseph’s lyrics, as well as the lead singer’s crystal clear vision for how he wants the show to unfold.
Even though it was his first time directing a full-length film, Eshleman says he knew going in that he could rely on his old friends to bring it for 60,000-plus as hard as they did for 60+ in their early days. “Back in 2011, even when they were playing a VFW as an opening act, they treated it like it was a huge deal,” he says. “Like they were the biggest band in the world … the documentary footage [in the movie] is more like, ‘we can’t believe we get to do this,’ not ‘look at how awesome we are.’ It’s ‘look how awesome this opportunity is, how lucky we are.’ It’s the guys you know, but they’re talking in a way you’re not used to.”
When the final shot was wrapped during the traditional show-closing song “Trees,” Eshleman says 21P’s longtime manager Chris Woltman came over and gave him a big bear hug. “I was very nervous about stepping up to that level, but the band taught me that I had what I needed to do this,” he says.
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