Svana Gisla, and Baillie Walsh talk about ABBA Voyage Show

Svana Gisla, and Baillie Walsh talk about ABBA Voyage Show - 雙語字幕

It's all when you're near,

you're not,

I can't do here,

you're the answer,

yeah The love you gave me nothing,

just the same,

yeah, it's all right And you're gone

Hi everybody,

I'm Tracy and this is Television Nation and I'm excited to have some people who are behind,

you know, probably the biggest show on the planet at the moment.

I if you don't know about Avaroyage at the moment, I don't know what news source you read because it's everywhere.

Unfortunately, since I'm in San Francisco, I can't

actually experience it myself,

so the next best thing is to talk to the producer and the director of Abba Voyage and I'm thrilled to have Savannah Geesla.

I forgot to ask you before we got on Geesla and Bailey Walsh.

who I want to say just first off,

I'm a huge admiration of your work,

the stuff that I've been able to see, so I'm thrilled to have you here to talk about why you did this.

And of course, I mean, I will have to talk about the the famous a hologram during Alexander McQueen's show another time.

The Moss hologram.

But so this show of course if you've seen their sources, it's this big stage show, it's in London and London.

on the east side of London and it's got his own facility and I'll be showing pictures of videos here.

I know if I want to really go into all of the details because there are a lot of questions I have to ask and we can dig that stuff up.

So obviously you guys, let's talk a little bit about your background first.

So, Sfana, I mean, I just have a list here of incredible shows on the road tour with Beyonce and Jay-Z,

CUNY Minilogue, and you did Black Star.

I produced Black Star, yes, for That to me is a groundbreaking, important piece of theatre.

I mean, that's amazing.

Thank you.

Good you.

Or on him too, obviously.

I think it's way ahead of its time still, unfortunately.

And, of course, Bailey, you've been directing a million different videos from musicians,

Oasis, and Keely, and Access, oh, I saw them when I was a kid.

Ooh, boy.

They're amazing.

And done all kinds of feature,

I mean, films with, you did one with a called Being James Bond with Daniel Craig and many other projects.

If you guys want to say anything more about your work and why you were capable of,

you know, why you guys were selected for, to do this work?

Well, I'll say that how I came across this job was that I've worked with Savannah on many projects before.

And Savannah was on this project way before I was, and they were looking for a director and Savannah after a while.

So, you know, I got you eventually.

Yeah.

By the time and then that came to me and asked me if I would do it.

And which of course, you know, it was an opportunity I couldn't possibly turn down.

So she introduced me to Benny and Bjorn.

and here we are three years later well this show the show merges the the real sort of experience you

might have with the digital why do you think people are responding to this why are they responding to

what I'm what I'm terming as experiential television what's what's happening here Well, I wouldn't call it television.

I first of all, I think people are responding to seeing something they've never seen before.

So it's quite groundbreaking in that sense.

I think they're also responding to ABBA, obviously.

which this was built around.

I think people call it holograms.

We made holograms at all as a completely different technique, as you'll know.

We've just done motion capture and in itself the technology isn't new.

The technology has been there for a while.

It's the scale of it.

that is new.

It's the enormity of the show and its own arena which we had to build.

There would be no show without this arena.

We have a lot of infrastructure in that building.

But I don't know, how do you think think the people responding to it, because it's a very emotional show.

And we've done is that,

you we've created these avatars that you actually believe are there and you used to,

well, the suspension of disbelief is such that you can believe they're there.

And it's an emotional experience, you can fall in love with these avatars.

So I think that that's why this is such a success for me.

And it's a very immersive experience.

So, you know, the arena, you're wrapped in this arena and you don't know where reality

starts and ends and, you know, where the kind of, you know, digital world begins.

And I think that because, you know, we start the show with kind of lighting that wraps the audience.

So they're already from the very, very start, they're immersed in this experience.

And I think that's really, that's really kind of caught people's imagination and their emotion.

I mean,

if I had to answer my own question,

I would say post-pandemic when people have just been dealing with zoom screens,

which I'm very grateful for,

that people are also looking for a shared experience,

they're looking for immersion,

they're looking for you know something but I think I'm also positing to you like why do you think

people responding to a digital experience that they know isn't real and yet they

need it to be in a in a four-dimensional environment you know what mean?

I think you're right absolutely people are desperate for a kind of communal

experience but I think that they would they're not desperate for a bad community communal experience.

I that will people are very grateful the kind of heart and soul that have gone into this from everybody involved and it's it's

a very very good show and it's on many levels as Joanna said it's that it's it's

new we haven't seen this before so I think that there is a communal the communal experience.

And so on has a lot to say about actually because there was,

you know, I think there was options at the beginning of it not being this community experience.

But yeah, I think the community experience is very, you know, and it's about music, you know, which is so loved.

Savannah, as a producer, I'm going to ask you, or maybe you both need to answer.

But this is the secret giant LED walls?

Is that what's going on?

Are there hollow screens?

I don't really want to that question,

and it's moments like this,

I wish you hadn't seen the show because we spent four years describing what this is in the progress of making,

and it's almost impossible to describe what this is.

I don't really want to talk about the things behind the scenes,

I think the magician doesn't really reveal their tricks,

especially when you haven't seen the magic trick yet, so I'm going to say that for you.

But I think it's a mixture of a lot of things,

and there is an old saying in magic, it's light and it's smoke and it's mirrors, so we have all that.

Yeah.

I recently actually interviewed the people behind the Queens Jubilee carriage,

what people called a hologram, but it was not a hologram, it was, where's that?

So I was kind of curious,

and am interested in this idea that you're creating something that was from the past in the present and making it feel like it's happening in front of you.

It's somebody who you retweeted recently, I think really hit it on the head.

Her name is Caitlyn Moran.

She was writing for The Times in London, and she said that because we can all be tourists in memories.

Memories are a thing that have become visible and real.

That's fascinating observation and But could be explored in so many new ways, not even just music concerts, but all forms of storytelling.

Why, what's so captivating about making a memory real?

I love the Caitlyn Moran article in,

I think it was in The Times and I don't tweet much but I think I did that one.

First of all, it's emotion, it's incredibly emotional.

Memories obviously incredibly personal and emotional to people,

but to be able to go into the past and,

like you said,

bring it into the new and thereby create

A world that has no boundaries of time and space in the same way that that world has no boundaries of physical digital space.

It becomes a whole new world,

if you like,

and I'm simplifying it an awful lot,

but I think she hit it on the head with the memories and I think she went on to elaborate that that with with creativity we can we can do anything now and we can literally up.

I think she mentioned,

you know,

let's have a look at Kate Bush dancing in her bedroom when she was a girl,

realizing she wanted to be an artist, you know, let's revisit that memory or that scenario and we can do that.

It's time travel, basically, and it's time travel with people's emotions.

Yeah, I think it is not only playing in the past though.

I think that this show particularly because this we have are still with us,

they're very much part of the show, they're part of to bring out her into the future, into the present day.

And I think that that's a really important part because we didn't take 1979 concerts.

What we did is we,

you know, recreated ABBA as they want to be and we want, we want them to be and they want to be in 2022.

So I think it was really interesting about the kind of playing with time, we're playing with past, present and future.

Because the future is, this is one of the futures of entertainment.

So you're playing with those three things.

It's very emotional.

And you're playing with the fact that Abba appear in this as themselves as they are today.

So they appear in the show as they are themselves today.

So that's another really important emotional moment in the show that really rounds it off and makes it.

It's not a vanity project because they're not,

they're not trying to pretend they look like this or they want to always be remembered like this.

They appear as themselves.

that's very much the present day.

So I think that we're playing with all of those time-bound.

And I think that that's another thing that people,

even if it's subliminal, there's a whole thing going on in your head about mortality and time and age and all of that stuff.

I think that's something that's going on underneath the surface of this show.

I think that storytellers, whether they're in television or film or theater directors or concert producers, they always want to tell a story.

What kinds of other stories do you want to tell?

What kind of other stories I'm always it said that thing of I mean,

obviously, you know, I'm a writer as well So there are kind of film scripts that I have many sitting in a drawer

But I never got to make so there's all those stories that I'd like to tell and there's all the future Film scripts are right.

We'll probably go in the drawer as well.

So there's always stories that I'd like to tell but the opportunities like given this opportunity by Savannah and the band and you know and this opportunity to tell this

story has been extraordinary.

So right now I'm kind of, I'm still working on it and I'm still here, so I haven't finished this journey yet.

When I've finished this journey, the first thing I'm going to do is take a rest, right?

And then we'll see what the, you know, I don't know what my next story is going to be.

I have no idea.

Well, what I think is also interesting, the fact that you said in an interview that, you

know, it was in your head, now it's out there, right?

You're telling a story that you want to tell that was in your head.

That's what all storytellers do.

And you have these new materials or tools, right?

You're telling stories in not only 2D, but 3D, which people have been doing for a long time, but 4D, like you said.

I'm kind of curious.

Do think this is a new platform?

Do think other filmmakers or television makers should start thinking about creating experiential documentaries, experiential movies?

Is Zwana?

Do you think that's something that you might move towards or both of you?

Is this an opportunity?

For me personally to move into it, um, yeah, absolutely.

I we've learned an enormous amount in these last few years.

I mean, half the time.

researching and developing the potential of something like this.

So, obviously, it would be great to continue that.

I the most interesting thing for me personally in terms of stories, I really like the time travel aspect of it.

And I really loved the idea or the thought that you might be able to travel literally back in time and experience different generations that came before us.

That I don't know.

I mean, for me, I think I love that we've been the first to kind of bring this idea to people with the first, right?

I love that.

It's been thrilling for all of us.

that we've created something new.

I do love the idea that this idea can go places like theatre,

like you're talking about,

cinema's much more difficult because cinema's doesn't,

you know,

it's much quicker turnaround and obviously it's kind of like when you're creating something like this,

you need to be in a, it takes a lot, right?

So it's kind of like, you need to be in a location for quite a time for it to be financially viable.

But I think theatre would be really,

really interesting and I think that this definitely is going to spread into theatre and if ever I was to theatre, I immediately do it.

It's a massive journey.

I'll definitely be doing it.

I thought actually developing a musical myself.

Believe me.

Yeah, there you go.

So yeah.

But this show, let's talk about mechanics actually, or the practicalities.

I this show was very expensive to produce.

The report was $175 million.

I don't know how much you recouped in the first week.

I don't know.

I think you're on your way, probably, pretty quickly.

It's to be there for a few years.

And I also saw a that This, you know, this is not easy to read.

You can repackage it and set it up elsewhere, but it's still a big deal to change the show.

It's still,

it's still an expensive first,

you know,

iteration, right, and at some point down the road, I would assume, you know, people might want Use your tools, use your platform, recreate this, make it cheaper to produce.

Is that you think in the works down the road?

I mean, like I said, the technology that we use is not new.

Anyone can do this.

I mean, you need a tremendous amount of money and time.

And so the technology isn't you.

Anyone can go and make a film, you know, everyone's got a camera, but doesn't mean it's going to be a good film.

So you need the ideas, you need the right ingredients.

And we had Abba and then we had Bayley and we had some of the most talented collaborators in the world.

And with,

with, with every of this production, we, we assembled a team Nobody said no, you know, everyone said yes and people poured their talents and time and energy and efforts into this with us for years

and years and years and that is what makes the show so unique any so if people want to do that for something else they absolutely can.

But like Bailey said this,

this, this, even though this customer The intention when we set off was never a commercial one, and that might sound ridiculous to you,

seeing as you just said what the budget was.

The budget was actually £140m, and we were recouping about three years, I think, if we're full.

So it's going to take a while.

So it was never, ever, ever a great commercial decision to do this.

And happened in the middle of it, when a ludicrous idea became a doubly ludicrous idea.

So there's This was made out of curiosity and joy and it was made with the backing of the four people in ABBA and without their passion for this,

I don't know if this would ever have happened because this wasn't set up by a group of investors or a record company or a movie studio,

it's made,

it's got a much more homemade feel about it and it was assembled and made by individuals so yeah yeah I mean obviously you know us being the pioneers

whenever you're a pioneer it's always very exciting So obviously,

what is going to happen is that the technology that we've used and we've done what we've used in this way is going to get cheaper and cheaper.

So will so in that sense it is going to be more available to people and more available to people to make something like this.

You know, being the first is always very expensive.

Yeah, the render time needs to be rendering can be made quicker and cheaper.

You can make this a lot quicker and cheaper.

I mean,

I think that in the back of celebrities minds or maybe everybody's mind is that they maybe it's just me,

you know, but they would love to be motion captured captured in 3D, you know, put in some kind of data bank somewhere.

to show our grandkids what we looked like, maybe talk to them.

There's all kinds of experiments.

I don't know if you've seen in VR where there's this Japanese woman who lost her child

and she was able to visit her dead child and talk with her while wearing a graphical version of her.

So I think there's an interest and a need to revisit memories and have people in front their parents and so on and so forth.

So feel like,

I feel like the ABBA sort of touched in on that,

that sort of mortality, the need for immortality, I should say, not mortality, but immortality.

And I mean,

as, as you storytellers you know that's when you're telling a story about real people

you're often you're recreating something for posterity right that's what this is about Yeah,

and you just said some really cool words in that that make this genuine and authentic and that is about our real people and their input and them doing this for themselves,

with themselves is the key here.

Doing something like this posthumously for an artist or a person that's not like a thing.

Then someone else is interpreting who that person was, or what they would do or say, or how they would present themselves.

And think that's a totally different category of creativity and that becomes like a tribute thing.

So the key to this for us was very,

very much getting the essence of Abba themselves and collaborating with them and following them what they want you to do.

I mean, And we produce a conference called the TV of Tomorrow, and to me this is television.

I know it's,

I call it experiential,

and you said you didn't think it was television,

but it's, and I don't know if it's LED screens, but it's, it's, it's some kind of graphical representation.

And do you feel this?

Well, I'm asking you, do you feel it's a TV of tomorrow, or maybe it's something else.

It's a theater of tomorrow.

I what would you call it?

It isn't TV much more, it's got a much more throw away, in a sense.

I there's genius television out there, right?

But in the sense of,

you know, TV is when you say TV, what that comes off in my mind is I'm sitting at home watching TV.

This is theatre, more than TV, this is theatre.

So I think that so in a sense of television is to suggest home to me.

As you said earlier, this is communal, but there's 3000 people in there a night.

That's the other thing about the show.

is that we've created this show.

And when we rehearsed this show for months, we, I think we had two months before we opened, right?

We rehearsed this show.

We were seeing something that was without an audience.

The moment you, which was, But the moment you put an audience into there, it becomes something else, right?

It's the, as Benny says in one of his bitches, the audience is the fifth part of Abba.

The fans are the fifth part of Abba, right?

So we've got the kind of, we've got the four rappers there.

There's something we've got this other element in the room.

That is in television.

So that, we are, this is theatre, more than anything.

It's not cinema, it's not television, it's theatre.

Having come from theatre and studying, I agree with you.

I also feel like it's a mixture of all those things.

But of which, do you allow mobile phones in there?

Or is there an augmented reality app?

Can people interact with the show?

Not We always felt,

and I really feel strongly about this,

that when people are in a theatre or in a concert and they're doing this, they're separated from the experience, right?

And I really find that objectionable,

especially when we spend so much money and so much time and so much effort,

I want those people to experience what we've given blood, sweat and tears and a lot of money for, right?

I want them to fully embrace this thing and to be present.

And take us out of the world.

And you're abstracting the experience completely.

So we had many discussions about this with many,

And we fought and fought because we believe so strongly that we want people to experience what we've created.

And I feel so strongly about that.

I think that it's a real shame when I go to any concert or to any any kind of events and.

People aren't experiencing it.

They're framing.

They're sending it to social media.

They're not present.

They're not in the moment.

And I think that's a real shame in this world.

How did you prevent people's room?

I can hear your passion.

How did you prevent them from bringing their phone?

Or you just couldn't turn it off?

We know that we actually just, we make an announcement at the of the show.

We them very politely that the police don't film, you know, to preserve the...

Put your phone away.

Yeah, put your phone away.

And it, put your phone away.

And because there are other fans, I think, Paul.

They're really decent, and the majority of the time they keep their phones away.

Why do you think this music touches people, and why is it important now?

Why is the show important now?

I mean,

it's probably more important now than it was when we set off starting to make it because you're talking about COVID and people,

people rediscovering their needs to be together in a community in a community experience with other people to see other people to feel other people's adrenaline and emotions and react to that.

So it's important for the times that we live in.

through rough last few years.

We were in the UK and we feel like we're going through many different things in this country and all of that but

The music has always been there.

I the music has a cultural presence just in culture, in general, Abba, especially in this part of the world.

So the music is forever present and it's remarkable that we have people here that come from the age of six upwards to 90 and they all have

a wonderful time.

And think that's the music that does that.

And I can't think of many musical artists or bands that have that ability.

I can't think of one actually.

I totally agree.

And I think that that's absolutely it.

That is music's most generational.

And literally, everyone, their music is magical.

It's completely magical.

And don't think that There is anyone more suited to this project than ever.

I've really, and I've been through everybody, you know, in center in my head.

Who could this, who else could do this?

I Ava is, Ava is the perfect band.

And I feel so lucky and privileged that I got to do it.

know, to be part of this show, who's I really do believe that Amber, you know, they are the perfect man for it.

Their music is very, very emotional.

It's not jolly melancholy, you know, it says jolly melon.

I think everybody must have experienced an obiturio band somewhere in their life, you know, so this is...

I'm assuming that David Bowie didn't leave a motion capture of himself somewhere, so you could redo Blackstar because that would be killer.

Not that I know of, no, but no.

Don't you think he would have been interested?

I think, I mean, very possibly.

I David was very curious.

He was similar to Abba.

He was constantly searching and there was a man that watched more television than anyone I've ever heard of.

He watched everything and he liked to keep up with with everything creative so yeah I think he would have loved it.

It's funny though I mean I always think you know because obviously Bowie is in like you know Bowie would be good to this.

I always thought Bowie was hologram anyway and I mean like in a really I mean it was just like this fabulous hologram that

exists and always will exist.

He was always a hologram to me.

He's a shimara from my Panera Shimara right how do you pronounce that word?

Actually, one thing I think that also potentially is possible in the future, which is something

that the inventor of television believed in very much so, which is the musical I'm writing right now.

He believed Final Farnsworth,

of course,

Logie Baird,

of course,

I'm sure you know They believed in the importance and power of seeing how other people interact and

their cultures and being part of their world and being able to see through television,

seeing at a distance of course,

which is what the word television means,

but it was about It's about experiencing something that's in someone else's head that is positive,

perhaps, you know, and so experiencing this as a positive memory.

Yeah.

Lovely.

Like said,

just on that note,

what's keeping me going,

what's giving me energy to still be here is when I go in and I see the crowd and I see those 3,000 people,

it's unbelievable.

I forgot to ask you an important question.

I meant to ask earlier.

Sorry everybody.

I know people have said that when they go there they can't believe what they're about to see.

They're sure.

There might be a disconnect at first.

But do you, what does that feel like when there might be a disconnect and then they just release and let go and enjoy themselves?

It's a really tangible moment and for some people it happens within minutes, for other people they just sort of slowly relax into it.

We always said in the making of this that if you haven't settled in in by song three, you we get the trouble.

And we get them, we sometimes get them on the first bars of the first song and it's a tangible thing.

You know,

there is a collective sigh of disbelief in the beginning,

you can hear it,

and then you look around and everyone's going,

you know,

so it's a real moment, and I remember when it first happened, Bailey about, we were rehearsing for two months before we had an audience.

We did a preview with 50% capacity, and we actually invited the local residents that live and work around the area and some volunteers.

So they weren't fans, you they were just...

That's a tough crowd and in the opening bars of the first song,

what happened to the people that were on the floor is they rushed towards the stage.

In one big sweep they just rushed towards the stage and I just grabbed Bailey's arm and I went, we've got them.

Like, that's it, that was the proof and that was the real...

Penny, drop, really let me show this down moment that I will never forget.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very See you in London.

Yeah, see you in London.

My husband is English, so I'll probably be there next year.

Don't worry.

Tell us about it.

school there a long time ago.

I studied drama.

Oh, wonderful.

Don't wait to see school.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

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