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from the tear-a-corner-off-your-DREAD-card dept.
Digital Music News has a brief mention about ABBA's new digital costumes, made by Industrial Light and Magic, which will be used at the concert tour accompanying their album release. It sounds like a similar method as was used to make Andy Serkis look like Gollum, but this time making people look younger and fresher. It's unclear whether the avatars will be mapped on the fly to real movement happening along with the concert or just running through pre-precorded routines.
Creative Director Ben Morris says his company has recreated ABBA in its prime, from 1979. "We are creating them as digital characters, then use performance capture techniques to animate them and make them look perfectly real," Morris says.
Klaxons' James Righton and Little Boots will both appear as part of the live band. The reunion will be the first in four decades with "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down" celebrating the announcement.
The new ABBA album Voyage will contain ten new tracks, with at least one Christmas song. Will the group dethrone Mariah Carey's Christmas tradition of taking the top of the Christmas charts? I guess we'll see later this year.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday September 09 2021, @07:35AM (3 children)
Why do people want to pay good money to watch old bastards shambling around on stage like zombies?
Thus ILM [ilm.com] is involved, and marketing is via the dodgier edges of social control media.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday September 09 2021, @09:01AM (1 child)
TL;DW: It is really Abba performing, but it's not live, it took 5 weeks to record.
I don't really see how this is different from the Japanese CGI avatar concerts that have existed since last decade, apart from the attempt at photorealism.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 09 2021, @01:06PM
1) If they're performance capturing "old ABBA" you'll have young faces and bodies creaking around the stage with stiff joints and no stamina (maybe that's why it took 5 weeks to record?)
2) If they're performance capturing young dancers and putting them in ABBA skins, will the young dancers be trained to dance "that lame 70s style"? Exclusively? Or will they be teaching the old dog skins new tricks?
3) If this took 5 weeks to record, then you might as well get the performance on BluRay and watch it on your own home theater system, the "Live" concert is little more than a movie premier attended by the band members.
4) If you're a fan of the (now 40-50 year old) recorded music, you probably don't want to hear what it sounds like played by the original band members - particularly on their original instruments without studio editing.
5) If ILM doesn't pull this off any better than they did reanimating Carrie Fischer for the new movies, you don't want BluRay resolution. Get it in standard definition sit far from the screen and don't wear corrective lenses, otherwise the uncanny valley is gonna make you want to puke.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 09 2021, @09:16AM
And to make up for the lack of other content in this post, I shall pay in youtube links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mudeZ089sA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo3pfnldlD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43zqYNIvUh0 (RIP Alexi Laiho, 1979-2020 :( )
I can't be 100% sure, but I think those are the only Abba songs in my CD collection.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves