LD ep18_04282025

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00] Svana Gisla: there's always an audience group called the reluctant husband. They always start off with the arms folded

And then in the end, they are windmilling on the dance floor. Just having the best time

[00:00:13] Rob Bredow: Welcome to the Lighter Darker Podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. Thanks for joining us for episode 18, 18 of, uh, 20 that we've planned for our first season, and we release these every other Tuesday. Great to have you with us today. my co-host today, as always is Todd Vaziri.

[00:00:33] Todd Vaziri: Hey, I'm Todd Vaziri, compositing supervisor and artist and Industrial Light and Magic.

[00:00:38] Rob Bredow: our producer Jenny Ely.

[00:00:40] Jenny Ely: Hi, I am Jenny, a production manager at ILM.

[00:00:42] Rob Bredow: And I'm Rob Bredow, the SVP of Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm. And all of us work together in the visual effects, animation and immersive entertainment industries. And today we have two very special guests with us. Uh, let me introduce first. Svana Gisla. Svana has produced many of the iconic music, uh, films of the last 20 years from Kylie's "Can't Get You Outta My Head", David Bowie's uh, "Black Star", uh, so many shows, and she also most recently produced the, um, the epic immersive experience ABBA Voyage. So welcome to the show, Svana.

[00:01:18] Svana Gisla: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. What a great company to be in.

[00:01:22] Rob Bredow: This is gonna be a fun one

[00:01:24] Svana Gisla: Yes.

[00:01:24] Rob Bredow: And we're also joined by Ben Morris, creative Director of ILM's London Studio. He began his career, uh, working on animatronics at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, or maybe that's at least the first thing I have down. Ben maybe did something before that, but he won an Academy Award and a BAFTA for his work on Golden Compass. In 2017 he served as VFX supervisor on the Oscar nominated Star Wars Last Jedi. He also supervised ILM's work on Abba Voyage. So we have two of the, two of my favorite people to talk to about the show and two of the uh, preeminent experts on putting this show together. So thank you for joining us, Ben, as well.

[00:02:03] Ben Morris: Hi there. Nice to see everyone.

[00:02:05] Svana Gisla: Ben just buried me in the credits there

[00:02:07] Todd Vaziri: No, I'm doing all can Svana not to fanboy over, "Can't Get You Outta My Head".

[00:02:14] Svana Gisla: go.

[00:02:15] Ben Morris: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Todd Vaziri: that I love that video so much..

[00:02:17] Svana Gisla: Gimme that one.

[00:02:18] Ben Morris: And David Bowie,

[00:02:20] Svana Gisla: I mean, Bowie, that's, that's the one I'm most proud of, I have to

[00:02:23] Jenny Ely: Yeah, you beat us all with David Bowie.

[00:02:25] Ben Morris: yeah.

[00:02:26] Svana Gisla: Well, I'll take it. I'll take it. I need something.

[00:02:31] Origin Stories

[00:02:31] Rob Bredow: So today for the show, we're just gonna talk very simply about kind of origin stories, what got Svana and Ben into this business, uh, to begin with. And then we're gonna spend most of our time talking about immersion in ABBA Voyage and some of the craft behind the scenes and some of the magic that takes place in that show.

And if you haven't seen ABBA Voyage, I guess by way of introduction, I should just say right up front, or maybe Ben and Svana should introduce it, it's an immersive experience where Abba, puts on a concert as if they're in their twenties, but you can see it in a real venue in London and. It was, it's a, it's a new form of entertainment.

Nobody's ever tried anything like this. Certainly not at this scale. It was very, very ambitious and it's been very successful. Now we're coming up to, is this the second anniversary of it already? And it's almost been sold out the entire time.

[00:03:21] Svana Gisla: It's the third.

[00:03:22] Rob Bredow: Third anniversary already.

[00:03:24] Svana Gisla: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:25] Rob Bredow: Yeah. So I don't know if I did a good job introducing for people who haven't seen the show, Svana. Is there any way you want to, can you do a better job introducing it than I

[00:03:33] Svana Gisla: No, '

[00:03:33] Rob Bredow: cause

[00:03:33] Svana Gisla: no.

[00:03:34] Rob Bredow: isn't it?

[00:03:35] Svana Gisla: I really can't. I, I, I've tried so many times and I fail every single time. It's, it's a concert and it's a concert that was 40 years in the making. And, um, and the making of that concert was as audacious and, and daring as, as we could possibly make it. And, um, and it was a lot of fun. Um, and thankfully people are still enjoying it and, and we keep going.

[00:04:00] Rob Bredow: Yes. It keeps going and keeps evolving. Um, Ben, in terms of getting started in your career, uh, maybe, maybe just in general, uh, I know people wanna hear about Henson's when they, when they hear that's on your, your resume or maybe maybe some of your Oscars. but us a little bit about what got you into this to begin with.

[00:04:20] Ben Morris: Ah, the, uh, or to clarify, so, uh. The first thing I ever did was, uh, build miniatures for Muppet Christmas Carol,

[00:04:28] Rob Bredow: Nice.

[00:04:29] Ben Morris: at Henson's. So, uh, I, I built fir trees, Dickensian buildings and all sorts of stuff like that. So

[00:04:35] Svana Gisla: so cool.

[00:04:35] Ben Morris: totally cool. And they sponsored me through university. Um, I, I kind of went along to a little presentation they did at the British Film Institute and uh, they were wonderful.

And I went up at the end and kind of, I look going back even further, 1977, I went to the cinema. I walked in and I saw Star Wars and I walked out and I turned to my mum and I said, uh, I'm just, I'm gonna do that. and I was

[00:05:00] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:05:00] Ben Morris: seven years old and, uh, and that, that's where it all started. So anyway, I then jumped, uh, to being a sort of crazy teenager, building models, blowing things up, having Super 8 cameras, shooting videos, uh, well film actually at the time, and just doing everything, uh, in mucking around in the back garden.

And the Henson guys were great. I used to do horror makeup for. know, for Halloween and stuff. And, and they finally said, stop, stop destroying your parents' house. Come, come and see how to do it properly.

[00:05:30] Rob Bredow: nice.

[00:05:31] Ben Morris: They gave me a leg up and I owe it to them, uh, where I am now.

[00:05:35] Rob Bredow: That's amazing. And what was your first job then that was kind of into that, into the digital realm where you are mo primarily working today? I know it's still a mix and a hybrid of the real world and the digital today, but,

[00:05:47] Ben Morris: it, uh, it occurred on, I did the first Babe film, uh,

[00:05:53] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:05:53] Ben Morris: when was involved in all the animatronics and control systems. And then we went out to Australia and did the Second Babe film. And I actually went to see, uh, the second Jurassic Park. Obviously I'd seen the first one. It was kind of like, that's cool. uh, seeing the second one in Sydney, halfway through shooting Babe two, I kind of said, Ugh. The way those creatures move is just so different and real. And

[00:06:16] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:06:16] Ben Morris: that was the point at which I decided to try and retrain. So I, I started the Babe two on the animatronics side and I finished it at Mill film, uh, in the digital side

[00:06:27] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:06:28] Ben Morris: as a junior artist.

[00:06:31] Rob Bredow: And Svana, I understand you have always been connected to music and these music stories that we were talking about in your bio, but how did you get into this in the first place? What was your connection to the industry?

[00:06:42] Svana Gisla: Well, I, I, I just completely winged it to be honest. Uh, I was raised in Iceland and um, back in the seventies, 'cause I also lived in the seventies, or maybe actually it was probably more like 82, 83. Um, there was a TV show on Icelandic television. And just to say, Iceland at the time had one television channel, which was, uh, run by the government. uh, it was, uh, didn't broadcast on Thursdays. 'cause the staff needed a day off a week. And also they broke for summer holidays at the month of July. So it was very cozy. And one once a week, they had, um, they had a program called Scon Rock where they played music videos. uh, I just completely fell in love instantly.

And uh, and I managed to find one friend in my class called Sonya, whose parents had a VHS machine. So we started recording them. And I would just devour. It just, it just became an absolute obsession. It was my link into the, into the big wide world, I think. And it was always music videos. And then, uh, as soon as I finished school, I moved to London and I wanted to work in the industry and I managed to get the lowest possible position at Oil Factory Films on Caledonian Road in London, which was making the coolest music videos in the world at the time.

And, um, and a year after that I got a phone call from RSA Ridley Scott Associates saying, would you come and run Black Dock Films, which was their sort of new music video division. And I did that for 16 years uh, and then came Bowie and then came ABBA. So I've done no films, TV series. I've done none of the cool stuff that you've done.

I've just been a music video fanatic, um, all my life.

[00:08:32] Rob Bredow: And then you went from music videos, which are productions unto themselves, but they're.

[00:08:36] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:08:37] Rob Bredow: compact schedules. They're relatively short

[00:08:40] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:08:40] Rob Bredow: to more than a thousand people working on Abba. I'm sure ABBA Voyage had more employees than the entire TV station you grew up watching. I mean that the scale of the project was enormous.

Right from end to end was this the first time taking on something of this scale for you,

[00:08:57] ABBA Voyage

[00:08:57] Svana Gisla: Oh gosh. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've done, I've done, um, documentaries and, you know, I've done projects that went on for maybe a year or so, you know, big stuff like "On the Run" with Beyonce and Jay-Z for HBO I was probably on that for almost a year. So I've done big things, but this was on another Although when I humbly walked into ILM in London to Ben with my storyboards, not my storyboards, our storyboards in, in my bag, I, I had no idea what we were about to do because none of us really understood what it was gonna be. We just took one step at a time and, and figured it out.

[00:09:34] Rob Bredow: Yeah,

[00:09:35] Todd Vaziri: that's one of the things I wanted to say about special venue projects as opposed to short films like music videos or movies. There's, it's, it's a totally different world in that. It's so hard to explain, especially when there's a facility involved. The,

[00:09:54] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:09:55] Todd Vaziri: venue is being built as you guys are

[00:09:58] Svana Gisla: Mm.

[00:09:58] Todd Vaziri: the imagery. Um, I recently had the chance to go see the sphere in Las Vegas and Sphere is a little bit easier to describe, but any one of these special venue things, whether, whether it's like Rise of the Resistance or an amazing, uh, special venue for, um, uh, another theme park and, but Voyage, like how you, it's hard to describe and that's what makes it so special.

It's like, this is very different and it, it seems like ABBA voyage is one of those things where if you have a chance to see it, you need to take that opportunity. You need to go see it.

[00:10:32] Svana Gisla: Yeah,

[00:10:33] Todd Vaziri: that, do, do you find that to be the case?

[00:10:35] Svana Gisla: I mean, I, I'm obviously gonna say yes to that. You, you have to come. No, but, but, but the building part, I mean, you know, that, that was the tricky bit, you know, we've all made sort of films short, long, big, small, but haven't ever built anything, I don't know anything about, you know, it's a nightmare. And now, and if you have ever built anything, you know what a nightmare is.

And obviously we had the best team around us, architects and stuff, but at the same time, the show, the building was built around the show, you're kind of attached to that process as well.

[00:11:10] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:11:10] Svana Gisla: So there were two lots of different plates spinning and, and, um, a lot of time in previs, you know, feeling nauseous with those goggles on trying to sit somewhere in an auditorium and not be sick.

And, oh yeah, this is gonna be great.

[00:11:24] Ben Morris: And I think it, my, my memory of it was, it was, um. a linear process,

[00:11:31] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:11:32] Ben Morris: lot of creative processes, you sometimes have to go in a circle

[00:11:35] Svana Gisla: Hmm.

[00:11:36] Ben Morris: that where you started was a good place or actually halfway around your fork.

[00:11:40] Rob Bredow: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:40] Ben Morris: remember those design sessions that we went to Svana talking about, Hey, is the shape of the building a circular thing?

Is it a hexagonal thing? Is it this, is it that, for, I think to to to, to be very honest, the, the collaborative spirit, nobody had done it before, but

[00:11:58] Rob Bredow: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:59] Ben Morris: nobody was pretending that they knew everything.

[00:12:01] Svana Gisla: No.

[00:12:02] Ben Morris: everybody was just trying to contribute and say, Hey, have we thought about this? Or Did you realize if we do that, it's gonna affect that over there?

And you know, even things like the sound, Svana

[00:12:12] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:12:12] Ben Morris: and it's kind of like,

[00:12:13] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:12:14] Ben Morris: how do you make perfect sound at the same time as perfect picture

[00:12:16] Rob Bredow: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:17] Ben Morris: all of those,

[00:12:18] Svana Gisla: Yeah. And how do you make it look good wherever you are sitting or standing in that 3000 arena, you know

[00:12:24] Ben Morris: yeah.

[00:12:24] Svana Gisla: that, and there is a certain element to some of this, which, which, you know, you put your sticks in the ground 'cause you don't really know where they're meant to be. So you collectively put the sticks in the ground hoping that thing's gonna work together.

There is an element of luck in there somewhere and, and an element of just, it was just sort of meant to be, if that doesn't sound too You know, there was just, there was a part of this for me as a producer and, and my co-producer Ludwig. we just to get everything out of the way, just kind of clear the road so the train could, you know, the, the, the kind of bus could keep moving and, and uh, you know, get the skeptics and the naysayers away as far as possible, 'cause all we had was this optimism and spirit that, um, this crazy, audacious, ridiculous thing was gonna. You know, recoup?

[00:13:18] Rob Bredow: It's, it's so, you know, in hindsight, you know, it's been sold out for now nearly three years. Um, and people can't say enough good things about the show. Everybody goes every night to have a party, uh, or two times a day to have a party in there and watch a concert that feels like a live concert. And all, it all works amazingly well.

The audience brings it to life, but easy. You know, it might be easy for some people to forget. I'm sure it's not easy for you two to forget. This was four or five years, um, started before covid. So you're making a show where 3000 people are gonna gather in person during the, uh, the time of social distancing and a lot of anxiety.

[00:13:55] Svana Gisla: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:55] Rob Bredow: It's being created during that time. It's not an inexpensive show to put together. Very, very complicated visuals, very uh, high-end construction, all these things. There were a lot of things pushing against it. And I think, Svana, what you were just saying, you were trying to keep that out of the way so that the

[00:14:10] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:14:11] Rob Bredow: continue to thrive.

[00:14:13] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:14:13] Rob Bredow: that's, I think what comes through in the show, at least when I sit in the audience, it feels like the show was built by a bunch of fans and

[00:14:20] Svana Gisla: Hmm.

[00:14:21] Rob Bredow: in the band themselves. The four of them like they were passionate about making something and putting on a show every single night, which they couldn't physically do

[00:14:29] Svana Gisla: Yeah,

[00:14:29] Rob Bredow: and their age. It comes through as like something, it was, it's almost a gift to the audience. And of course, everybody wanted it to make money and be as successful as it has been, but it feels like the heart of it was really the creative and the, and the, the feeling that they wanted to express, which is, I want to put on a show again, like we used to.

[00:14:46] Svana Gisla: absolutely. There was no financial incentive in making this at all. Quite the opposite. There was more thinking like, how much money can you guys actually afford to lose? So we can have a go at it. You know, it really genuinely was like that. And when we did the motion capture in Sweden, Stockholm in February, 2020, you know, I don't need to remind you what happened in March, 2020.

There was a lockdown on a worldwide scale. We had just with, uh, with our, um, partners in Sweden finished the investment pitch. we were pitching, know, for the bulk of 140 million pounds on Zoom, um, during Covid trying to sort of say to you, give us all this money so we can build this thing where people have to come 3000 at a time, seven times a week, and then you might recoup in three years.

You know, it was insane. I'm, someone should have said, you need to stop it. This is, you just need to stop. one did. No one did.

[00:15:48] Ben Morris: We thought, well, we thought, I mean, it was literally, we didn't even know if people were gonna gather in the way they

[00:15:53] Svana Gisla: No, no.

[00:15:54] Ben Morris: it was

[00:15:55] Rob Bredow: Right.

[00:15:56] Ben Morris: one of those drop dead. Oh my goodness me. Is this totally the wrong investment to be doing?

[00:16:01] Svana Gisla: Uh, it was the wrong investment. And remember Ben, we were meant to do the second mocap in April.

[00:16:05] Ben Morris: Yeah,

[00:16:06] Svana Gisla: we couldn't do that. And then we, we bought our own covid testing lab, so, so we could have, uh, a people in the office and we had a nurse come every day and covid test everybody. uh, then we managed to get the shoot together in September. Uh, and, and that was a miracle 'cause there was a pocket autumn where the lockdown lifted and then it came back in December. So I say there's a lot of luck involved as well. Um, so there was a world where we couldn't even finish making the show because we hadn't finished And mocap shoots like that.

I mean, the two, 300 people that's.

[00:16:45] Ben Morris: And it, it was also, I, it, it was a huge risk with the covid happening, but funnily enough, there was so many unknown things that still needed resolving that we actually used the time

[00:16:58] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:16:58] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:16:58] Ben Morris: Covid actually. Reduced our efficiency in working together. We used that seemingly to solve all the, the problems that needed to be solved, to be effective when we finally hit the

[00:17:09] Svana Gisla: Yeah,

[00:17:10] Ben Morris: And I, I think we don't need that. We don't need that runway that anymore because we, we learned and we understand all that stuff now, but at the time it was, uh, it was a blessing in disguise even though it was a huge risk, I think.

[00:17:23] Svana Gisla: I think our director, Baillie Walsh, was, was, uh, incredibly grateful for the extra three months too, to

[00:17:29] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:17:30] Svana Gisla: out what the show was gonna look like and what was gonna happen.

[00:17:34] Rob Bredow: there was also another thing that you, you Americans maybe don't have in the forefront of your minds, but we definitely did, did, um, that thing called Brexit that was also enormously helpful. in the import of goods and services,

[00:17:50] Ben Morris: Ah.

[00:17:50] Svana Gisla: whilst building something, you know, that was great. And then, uh, and then there was a thing, remember in the Suez canal where a ship where, yeah, we were right behind that with our sound insulation from Melbourne that got, yeah, that got there like three weeks late and we couldn't open without it, you know, it was like, and we, we had a fantastic, um, project manager on the build called Chris Hay, and I think he did not sleep for three weeks.

He was just reading Suez canal news, like it was thing that he depended on. there was lots of sort of funny little things like that.

[00:18:29] Rob Bredow: on, I, I think it was last week's episode of this podcast, uh, we asked Janet Lewin, who's a producer, you know, how, or someone asked a great question of Janet Lewin, which was, um, when you're trying to schedule something that has so much innovation in it, how do you even approach that as a producer? And she had a response that was terrific.

'cause it's not just about scheduling as a producer, it's about all the other things around it. And bringing the teams together and collaborating across the departments to figure out what the new plan is. And sometimes every day you're dealing with the new plan. It sounds like what you're describing. Kind of lines up with that. You have to constantly be fielding these things as they come. 'cause you certainly can't schedule around the Suez Canal being open or not.

[00:19:07] Svana Gisla: No, absolutely no, totally. And, and, and just, I think, you know, the team spirit is a remarkable thing. You know, when you have of people that just pull in the same direction every hour of every single day, you sort of feel, you start believing after a while that you can do anything and you need that kind of, you know, that kind of audacity to, to climb some of these mountains because. You have to believe that there is no way you're gonna fail.

[00:19:36] Rob Bredow: Yeah. '

[00:19:37] Svana Gisla: cause otherwise you, uh, the doubt will spread and everybody starts questioning everything and then it's done. just, it's finished.

[00:19:45] Rob Bredow: So you created this culture, uh, on the show that made the impossible possible. And that's actually what the whole team did. One of the magic moments for me watching it, and this is something that Ben was talking about well before we had there was even a venue to go to, was the integration between the practical lights

[00:20:03] Svana Gisla: Mm.

[00:20:03] Rob Bredow: the, the actors, the digital actors and real actors of course, on stage or the real cast on stage. Um, can you talk a little bit about the revelation and the aha moments behind that, the importance that that lighting integration was gonna have? And then maybe a little bit about practically how you pulled that off because the, that illusion is so successful. I, I sat in the theater with a bunch of people who are experts about immersive technologies and immersive shows, and I remember. Like three songs in, they're like, okay, I get, I get that's digital, but what about that?

[00:20:32] Svana Gisla: Yeah,

[00:20:33] Rob Bredow: I'm like, well, I don't really wanna give away the magic, but yeah, it's digital too. And, and then what about that? They're looking at lights that they think are practical, but they're actually digital. So it, it fools even an experienced eye.

I think even 20 minutes into the show,

[00:20:46] Svana Gisla: well, it fooled our lighting riggers because when we were putting up the, the trusses and the lighting grids, a couple of times they went up to the grid to try and change a light bulb, and then realizing that it was in the digital grid,

[00:20:57] Rob Bredow: it was one of Ben's, it was one of Ben's light bulbs,

[00:21:00] Todd Vaziri: just one ben sitting back quietly giggling.

[00:21:03] Svana Gisla: yeah, Ben had left the light flickering. He sat there rubbing his palms and, and, and chuckling away.

[00:21:07] Ben Morris: It was,

[00:21:09] Svana Gisla: do you remember that Ben?

[00:21:10] Ben Morris: I, I do, I do. They actually said if we left it, and they said if we left something on, and it was just like, no, no, no. Don't worry, we'll switch that off. That's, that's in our world. And

[00:21:19] Rob Bredow: that's in the media.

[00:21:21] Ben Morris: Yeah, yeah.

I, I don't know. I mean, to, to me, I, if I'm jumping in, but I think, um. I think the first thing that I found most, uh, interesting, and it was a really strong, uh, instinct from Baillie, was he wanted to, he didn't want to use traditional staging in the sense of flats and staircases and all of that sort of dimensional stuff.

He, he felt very strongly that light should form the structure and scale and the, the, the, the space in, not just the arena, but the screen. And the great thing about that was if we could establish identical looking light in, in that whole space, you only ever think of it as one space. It's not two spaces.

And the screen suddenly sort of dissolves and is no longer a barrier. You don't even, you don't want to think about that. And I think the more we put onto the screen and the more we learn about the, I'm going to admit there's a screen, um, the more we learnt about it. The more that that sort of recipe worked really effectively.

And there are lots of different sorts of lights going on in the show. There's traditional lighting instruments from rock concerts. There's some that have never existed before. There's kinetic sculptures, there's lasers. you are really mashing it up. But they both, they exist in both spaces. So the audience feels part of the concert.

It's not like you're in a football stadium or a, or a larger building where you are kind of in the dark space and all the fun stuff happens in front of you. The fun stuff's happening over the on top of you, behind you, around you, everywhere and in front of you. And I think that's, to me, that resonates.

And a lot of people talk about that as much as the fact they're actually seeing abba, I think was a, a

[00:23:07] Svana Gisla: Yeah, but then you guys took it further so that the digital light that's bouncing off the physical stage then bounces light back into the digital stage. So then your mind just goes, oh, I don't even know anymore, you know?

[00:23:24] Ben Morris: We spend, we, well, an example of that is we spend ages. Uh, there are lasers in the show. I'm gonna give it away. There are lasers in the

[00:23:32] Svana Gisla: Ben, you need to Someone put a muzzle on Ben here. You won't need to go after this.

[00:23:37] Ben Morris: no, no. So, And then it, it happens about this point. No, no. And gi give him a shout. I can't Is

[00:23:42] Svana Gisla: Michael Sollinger? Yeah,

[00:23:44] Ben Morris: Yeah. Yeah. He, he's a crazy German laser specialist

[00:23:49] Svana Gisla: yeah,

[00:23:49] Ben Morris: a, a, a laboratory underground somewhere in Berlin.

[00:23:53] Svana Gisla: yeah.

[00:23:53] Ben Morris: he's, he's a great specialist in lasers.

[00:23:55] Svana Gisla: blends colors. He makes the lasers blend. Sorry, fan girl.

[00:23:59] Ben Morris: no, no, no, no. See, he did all this amazing work and the lasers are in the, uh, around the audience during the show. At the same time as that there's the, the characters, uh, or the, the, the digital versions of ABBA are wearing, uh, a futuristic outfit similar to you might have seen in the Tron movies. And

[00:24:17] Rob Bredow: mm-hmm.

[00:24:17] Ben Morris: acrylic plates that are highly polished and sort of usually reflective. And so whilst we never actually generated lasers that you see in the virtual world on the screen, we actually had to generate them because they have to reflect perfectly in time and color with everything that's going on in the arena.

[00:24:35] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:24:35] Ben Morris: And so when you, when we sat there, we almost wanted to show people that we'd worked out how to create digital

[00:24:41] Rob Bredow: Yes.

[00:24:42] Ben Morris: even though they only just flash every now and these lapels.

So every now and then, if I, if I'm allowed, I sneak out and say, look, here we go. This is us matching a real laser to a, a digital laser. it's tiny little things like that that actually people they feel, but they don't. They, they don't,

[00:24:58] Todd Vaziri: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:59] Ben Morris: not sort of, you feel it, but, and it feels right, but you are not actually, it's not blatant, um, in terms of your recognition of it.

[00:25:07] Rob Bredow: as people are listening to this highly collaborative world that needs to be integrated between the physical world and the digital world, they're probably picturing, you know, in this five year or four or five year schedule, you had two years in the venue to fine tune this thing and to try things out and see what worked and what didn't. But it was actually nothing like that. You had to do all this planning digitally and in the avid and in headsets as you were describing, because when you walked into the venue, you only had it for not very many weeks before the show was live in front of real audiences, right?

[00:25:38] Svana Gisla: No, they were still building it. When we went in there, they, you know, we were fighting the hammer knocks next door. I can't remember how many weeks we had, Ben, did we have six weeks?

[00:25:49] Ben Morris: six or eight weeks, but

[00:25:51] Svana Gisla: Yeah,

[00:25:51] Ben Morris: Every now and then somebody would shout.

[00:25:53] Svana Gisla: yeah,

[00:25:53] Ben Morris: in the roof. They're in the

[00:25:55] Svana Gisla: yeah.

[00:25:55] Ben Morris: cleared the floor, so

[00:25:57] Svana Gisla: We had to put hard hats on and run away.

[00:25:59] Ben Morris: yeah,

[00:26:00] Rob Bredow: It became a construction zone

[00:26:01] Svana Gisla: It was the total construction zone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:04] Ben Morris: yeah. And, and it, I, I learned the rule that, uh, content and media tends to be elbowed to the end of the day or the middle of the night.

[00:26:12] Rob Bredow: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:12] Svana Gisla: Hmm.

[00:26:13] Ben Morris: and that, that was, um, but that's apparently normal in the rock and roll world.

[00:26:17] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:26:17] Ben Morris: heavy guns in and the forklifts and the, uh, the, the, the big machinery then the content can

[00:26:23] Svana Gisla: The lighting guys like to work at night. I think they,

[00:26:26] Ben Morris: I know they

[00:26:26] Svana Gisla: they love it.

[00:26:28] Ben Morris: a sort of takeaway

[00:26:29] Svana Gisla: Yeah. Yeah. 2:00 AM start, you know, they love it.

[00:26:35] Ben Morris: is we've been working since eight in the morning

[00:26:38] Svana Gisla: I know. I know.

[00:26:40] Rob Bredow: have to get on that evening schedule.

[00:26:42] Svana Gisla: Mm.

[00:26:43] Ben Morris: yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:43] Rob Bredow: O one of the things the show does so well is pace itself. You know, it's a, it's an hour and a half of rock concert and it feels like two thirds of the way through. You're still revealing new tricks new things are happening, media showing up in different places, lights that you haven't seen are doing cool, new things you haven't seen before. it seems like it required a lot of constraint not to, not to use every trick in the book, in the first song. And, and the show doesn't do that. It really keeps building and surprising you throughout. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about the evolution of that. 'cause creatively I thought that was so satisfying and successful,

[00:27:20] Svana Gisla: I mean, that was all our director, Baillie. I mean, he, he had pretty much free reign on, on that, apart from the set list, which came from Abba. I think with anything that you do when everything is available to you, which it sort of was for us, it all becomes an exercise in restraint because you, you can't keep throwing things at it.

You know, the, the more isn't necessarily better. Just because something's available to you doesn't mean. know, you're bettering anything. So that was, I mean, if you agree, Ben, I'd say that was absolutely Baillie. And then you have to remember you've got that music and some of those songs. I mean, let's be honest, you could just play them and sit in a black room and you'd feel something, you would cry, you would don't even need to turn a light bulb on.

And, and, you know, if you start there, you just have to pull a little few threads and you know, you are already, it's all about the emotion. Um, and of course, you know, we go for it in other songs, I mean, you know, it rains disco, but in other parts it's, it's allowed to be a bit more quiet, don't you think, Ben?

I mean,

[00:28:29] Ben Morris: I, I totally do. And I think there's, um. I think less is more is absolutely where it was at. And, and there are lighting instruments and, and very special pieces of special effects in there or so that are only used in one

[00:28:43] Svana Gisla: mm-hmm.

[00:28:43] Ben Morris: you could look at that and say, well, we, we've paid for it now

[00:28:47] Svana Gisla: Mm.

[00:28:47] Ben Morris: it in eight of the 22 songs or whatever.

And it's the fact that they have unique characteristics keeps it into, in such a rich visual, experience. If you, if you just kept cranking the handle, same, same lights, same, same sort of, uh, effects. I, I think people will get bored and saturated. So that, that restraint is, is great. I mean the, means that the ceiling is about to collapse 'cause there's so much technology in it

[00:29:17] Svana Gisla: 645 tons

[00:29:19] Ben Morris: Yeah.

And,

[00:29:20] Rob Bredow: 645 tons of instruments up

[00:29:22] Svana Gisla: ton. Yeah. In the, in the, in the grid. Above the audience. Yeah. It's,

[00:29:25] Todd Vaziri: My

[00:29:26] Svana Gisla: it's.

[00:29:26] Ben Morris: came and said, well, could you, could you change it up and could we put some new stuff in? And we all looked in the roof and just sort of went. Nah, there's no more room. There's

[00:29:33] Rob Bredow: There's,

[00:29:33] Ben Morris: up there.

[00:29:34] Rob Bredow: there's physically

[00:29:35] Svana Gisla: The German,

[00:29:36] Rob Bredow: room.

[00:29:36] Svana Gisla: German engineers, the German, um, guys that supplied our, our, some of our German lighting systems, they thought the Japanese had done the grid 'cause it was so neatly arranged. It was,

[00:29:45] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:29:46] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:29:47] Svana Gisla: it looked so beautiful.

[00:29:49] Ben Morris: the, the other thing that we did in order to make, um, 'cause in, in our film world sometimes you, you overdress you do set dressing to make it look cool. And, and I dunno, particularly in science fiction and like, and so we'd, we'd dressed all the cables around our virtual digital trusses and stuff and, and little and LED lights that show that a lighting system is working and everything.

And the lighting designer said to me, be fired if we ever rigged that at a real concert. You never point the LEDs towards the audience, you hide them to the back so the people could, so the roadies can see when something's gone wrong and it's flashing red and you definitely don't loop the cables around you, you take them on the back.

So we were breaking all the rules to make it just look a bit cooler.

[00:30:29] Todd Vaziri: I, can I ask about coming from a music video, uh, background and a film background, there's certain like, um, concrete foundations that we rely on. We rely on the frame. We, we know what the aspect ratio is of the frame. We know that all eyes are gonna be on that frame. We rely on a consistent frame, uh, 24 frames per second. We rely on that. There's going to be cuts. We can start a shot. The shot will have a beginning, middle, and then we're gonna cut to something. like this, when you're building an entire concert where you are, you know, your resolutions are outta control, your frame rates are outta control. There's no such thing as a cut.

You don't know where any one audience member is going to be looking at any one time. How was that a, was that a difficult transition from coming from the, these other backgrounds, or did it, did you guys click, did it click really quickly in terms of working on the storytelling of, of it all?

[00:31:26] Ben Morris: That's fine. I dunno, if you wanna talk to the storytelling, I can talk to the internal.

[00:31:30] Svana Gisla: No, go for it. Go for it.

[00:31:32] Ben Morris: um, right on the money, Todd, right on the money. It was, it was a learning experience. And, and when you go to a concert, you kind of just take it for granted what you're seeing in front of you. What you don't realize is that there's an online editor there and probably a camera crew of between 10 to 20 cameramen hanging, hidden away somebody's cutting endlessly. And so for us, the linear, the linear edit never existed. There was always a, what we called, um, the life size, uh, digital characters. And they, they have to sustain. There are no cuts there. You can't hide a simulation in five seconds and then cut to another. And, and the frame rates that were required meant that we, and if we did multiple songs in a row, it was tens of thousands of frames that your, your hair simulate, your beautiful flowing, uh, golden locks, uh, can't go wrong.

You can't have a bad hair day halfway through a song and do a reset. that. That required lots of different, uh, restructuring in our pipeline. But then also the fact that you could have one image per, per second in the show, you could have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And in fact, there's one beautiful song where mirrors are involved as well. so for us, it became this incredible multidimensional sort of montage of time you'd have imag, you'd have secondary, uh, projection surfaces, you'd have additional, um, even mirrors going on. And it, it actually meant a, that we had to, uh, be very ca not, not just the fact we didn't have cuts to escape, uh, from things that might be challenging.

Uh, when you do them for longer than five or 10 seconds, you actually. You would be looking front on at somebody in the, in the, uh, the, the live action section, but a camera that is functioning on the imax, which are the big screens to the left and right, and IMAG stands for image magnification. That camera might be looping around that person.

So you're actually seeing things on the reverse side of them that you'd never see in a cinema shot. So we had to make sure that the characters were utterly perfect from every direction. 'cause there were five or six additional cameras covering that footage. So in essence, we, we learned an awful lot and we made a, we made a new pipeline with a special tool called Super Trooper, which was a way for us to manage vast amounts of multiple rendering. and yeah, and, and, but, but to Farah's earlier point. We, we just rolled with the punches. We knew that we didn't know everything. And when, you know, you don't know everything, you have to be open to making things up. And the, the team were incredible and we learned with Wana Ludwig and Baillie, Hey God, we hadn't thought about this, but we now need to how we're looking at this song. and that rippled through all the way through to the teams in ILM, um, and the lighting designers and all the other people involved in the project. Um, so yeah, it was, it was a complex jigsaw, but we just, we just, I, I think you described it, you just cleared the runway and everyone just had to work out how to

[00:34:42] Svana Gisla: That's it.

[00:34:43] Ben Morris: that was very

[00:34:43] Svana Gisla: That's it.

[00:34:44] Ben Morris: attitude for the whole

[00:34:45] Svana Gisla: I, I remember a very awkward moment. awkward isn't the word. Maybe, maybe. I thought maybe we were staring down the, the end of the road in that moment where Ben and Sue Lister said, so, um, when are you delivering your storyboards? And me and Baillie looked at each other and, what are you talking about? It's a concert. There's no storyboards. Ben's face just went white. And he, he sort of went, yeah, but how many frames are we doing? How, how, how, how are we gonna, you know, what are we doing? I said, well, we'll figure it out. But it's, it's a concert. Ben, we got a storyboard it.

[00:35:21] Ben Morris: I also talked it about directing stars and rock

[00:35:26] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:35:26] Ben Morris: just went, Ben, I could have tell you something. You don't direct them. They're not actors. You don't tell them they've got it wrong. They are themselves. They do what they do. And so, yeah, we were, I, I was certainly learning.

[00:35:39] Svana Gisla: It was.

[00:35:40] Rob Bredow: to that end, as you were doing the mocap sessions, you were actually not only getting the performances of the, of the original Abba,

[00:35:48] Svana Gisla: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:48] Rob Bredow: but also the four of them, but also camera and other takes, and

[00:35:52] Svana Gisla: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:52] Rob Bredow: the only thing that you would use, but that was the initial driving force to be able to put together what the show is gonna feel like to make it feel as authentic of a live show as

[00:36:00] Svana Gisla: Well that pertains to the sort of storytelling part of the question, I guess, which is in the mocap. Um, we had a, a, a full live camera crew and, and we shot it, like we shoot concerts. I mean, I just told you about the Beyonce Jay-Z tour that I did, you know, the DP there, Eck book. brought him in and he brought five, six cameramen and, and you know, steady cams and cranes and everything. And we just shot the performances a concert. And then Baillie edited Im mags and stuff when needed from that, from like a little that ILM gave me, which is you can afford. Seven shots with one person in them. You can afford shots with all four. And then it was the head scratch of a Baillie and the editor going, how many?

How many shots with four people have I got? That was the storyboard processes. Really?

[00:36:57] Rob Bredow: Was in the edit after the

[00:36:58] Svana Gisla: Yeah. Well, that's how we figured it out. What we could afford to do. Because obviously, you know every single frame of that VFX with those thousand people that you mentioned, it's it's money.

[00:37:09] Ben Morris: I think the, the, um. The, the we, we work with actors on set film sets all the time, and one of the talents of an actor is to, perform without referencing the camera, unless specifically that is a

[00:37:25] Rob Bredow: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:26] Ben Morris: effect. And it's, it's a very, it's a very, um, it's an incredible skill actually to be able to do that. What I've, what I learned in these concerts and when I watch concerts more and more is there, there's still. Don't look down the camera, but there is a ballet between the camera person and the artist. And they really, they really work together. A guitarist going into a guitar solo with a, a camera person is looking up at them.

They, they both know that they're there and even if they're not staring at each other or winking at each other, they know they're making a cool shot. And the same is true of a vocalist or a pianist. And to see this camera team step on stage, they took everybody's performances to another level. Because as soon as you stepped off the stage and the performers stepped off the stage and looked at it, they kind of got energized by it.

They were thinking, even though we're in this crazy slightly abstract, uh, world of a capture process, could see the basis of those final rock and roll pop shots,

[00:38:27] Svana Gisla: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:28] Ben Morris: um, in the raw footage. And that, I think that took everybody well, it. took a huge sigh of relief. Um, but I think also all the performers actually really dug into it at that point and went, yes, I get this.

[00:38:41] Svana Gisla: And, and I can't really not mention Wayne McGregor just in this part of the conversation because his choreography and, and what he brought to the table in terms of the physicality of those performers becoming Abba, he also knew that there was going to be a cam, you know, he also understood the assignments.

So there are a lot of genius sequences there that, um, Wayne just, it blows one's mind when someone of that caliber comes and does a silly little show with, with people like us. And, you know, tears himself away from the Royal Ballet for a minute. and, uh, that, you know, I just, I just had to mention him in this context 'cause he was unbelievable.

[00:39:22] Ben Morris: and he also, I, for me, he was. He honored Abba were, Abba weren't gymnasts

[00:39:30] Svana Gisla: No.

[00:39:31] Ben Morris: younger.

[00:39:31] Svana Gisla: No.

[00:39:32] Ben Morris: they were a Swedish band who performed in a very, um, honest way. They were musicians as much as they were performers. And I think Wayne took, took that and expanded on it, but didn't go bananas.

He, he, he, do you know what I mean? One of the worst things you can possibly do is create a digital version of a person, let's say, and take them out of the performance or expression space that the audience is used to seeing them in. Because then immediately the audience says, this is wrong. This is, this must be false. And I think Wayne was very clever at, at being able to expand and bring even more, uh, excitement into those performances without breaking it.

[00:40:13] Rob Bredow: Well

[00:40:14] Ben Morris: so.

[00:40:14] Rob Bredow: of the things, I think that's one of the notes that gets hit so perfectly in this show. It honors the legacy and the authenticity of abba. So you really are watching an ABBA show, but you're also seeing it imagined through. A, a new lens, uh, with today's technology, with, with a concert that's being put on as if it's the biggest concert of the year being done right now in 2025. And to be able to respect the legacy and lean into the new technology and new approach and to get that authenticity in there at the same time, I think is quite, it was quite a balancing act. I'm sure. It was a balancing act. You had to, a balance, you had to strike the entire time.

[00:40:53] Todd Vaziri: it's like you built a time machine, but instead of taking the audience back in time, you took them forward in time and said,

[00:40:59] Svana Gisla: Exactly.

[00:40:59] Todd Vaziri: show we could possibly make with them from the past. And amazingly, we've talked this entire time and we, we haven't even gotten into the nitty gritty of the digital humans from top to bottom, these big performances, um, digital humans, including their costumes and, and, uh, jewelry and, and makeup and everything. I mean, what were some of the, you know, crazy. What were some of the challenges of creating, uh, authentic digital humans, especially of people who have, you know, are in the zeitgeist, people know what an ABBA performance is like. These are extremely photographed people performing for decades. Uh, what were some of the challenges of creating fully digital versions of these performers?

[00:41:43] Ben Morris: Um,

[00:41:45] Todd Vaziri: The

[00:41:46] Ben Morris: well, no, I think I, well, I I think we can safely say nobody done it before. So again, uh, but we knew we wanted to do it to the best of our, possibly, of, of our abilities. But I think even the real basics you'll remember. But, um, there, there are certain pop acts, rock acts, who have been going for 40 years.

Abba were active for about 10, maybe

[00:42:10] Svana Gisla: Think it was eight. Yeah.

[00:42:12] Ben Morris: Um,

[00:42:13] Rob Bredow: Hmm.

[00:42:14] Ben Morris: Even finding within those eight years, the Abba, that is, the Abba that is in the show, took, took time. And the more you look at people and the more the fans know those people, they changed from being in their, I, I think they were sort of mid twenties when they first hit it with Waterloo.

And then going into the mid thirties. All sorts of different things were happening through their lives in those eight years. And what we had to do with the help of Svana and Ludwig and, and Baillie was narrow that down because initially the brief was, we'll just make Abba. actually, you look at photos through those eight years, they're extraordinarily different even though they are the same people.

So for us to, rather than sort of losing our direction and sense of direction, we had to narrow it down almost to a period, which I think was 76. It was in

[00:43:03] Svana Gisla: 79, some summer, 79, I think we put the pin down and that was to do with some people liking their hair in that time, and it wasn't the girls.

[00:43:13] Rob Bredow: Yeah.

[00:43:19] Ben Morris: And so, and, and, but, but I, but I would say, uh, we did, uh, a number of things that, uh, were wonderful that helped the digital Svana

and team, uh, got some incredible costume makers, um, in, uh, they also got hairstylists and we did everything that needed to be digital for real. Um, so we, we got real costumes made and we were able to take those apart and look at the patterning and look at all of the crystals and gems and, uh. Lovely stitching that was occurring. Um, and that gave us a target, though. It, it was a, what we tend to call it a blueprint build at that point. The creativity has actually occurred in creating the real object. Um, the, the, the digital, uh, version of it is then a f similar of that. That doesn't mean that we didn't make slight alterations in the process. Uh, one of, one of the heavier capes that is worn, it would've actually physically been quite hard to dance in. Um, but because ours are digital, they don't wear anything. And so we can make it look and feel that any way we want. so that was great. And the hair, oh, we, we spent a lot of time on the hair. I, say the, the guy, the, the guy who had the easiest hair was ultimately, I think Bjorn. I think Benny. Benny had a few iterations and the girls had quite a few.

[00:44:39] Todd Vaziri: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:40] Ben Morris: again comes down to when we do film shots. A long shot is 15 seconds. Here, we're talking to eight minutes of continuous simulation. So, um, and the, the, the digital characters, by the way, by way of being captured, their hair was actually, uh, dealt with and constraint.

It was held back, so they didn't have the natural instinct to come up and clear their face.

[00:45:03] Todd Vaziri: hmm.

[00:45:03] Ben Morris: So we actually animated moments like that to bring some of that reality back into the process.

[00:45:10] Rob Bredow: Love it.

[00:45:11] Ben Morris: so, um, and it was just an awful lot of hard work, uh, and I collaboration as well. It wasn't just, uh, the, the London studio as the main hub, but we had Singapore, we had Vancouver, and we had a small team even in San Francisco who was involved.

So it, it really took a, a village.

[00:45:28] Todd Vaziri: So when you, you have made an incredible time traveling concert, uh, in, in real life. When rock bands go on tour, uh, you know, the, they go from city to city venue to venue. The set list changes. There's a, there's a basic show, but the, there's a slight alterations and particularly like when there's a residence, uh, at a particular place, the, the show evolves over time.

Um, is, is there, are there any plans for ABBA voyage to do something similar?

[00:45:57] Svana Gisla: Yeah, I think they would be very silly if they didn't consider. Some sort of an evolution. And I think, um, the word on the street is that, um, something might change in the set list potentially. Um, they're keeping their cards very close to their gs, so we'll have to see on the third anniversary in, uh, on the 27th of May. But I think, and I speak, I'm gonna speak for you too, Ben, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. We will keep going as, as long as people keep coming. I mean, I would happily keep evolving this show, um, for, If, if, if the investors keep sending more money and the people keep coming,

[00:46:39] Ben Morris: They've got a big catalog, let's put it

[00:46:42] Svana Gisla: there is at least 50 number one hits that we, I mean, I, I'm exaggerating. No, there's at least 40 songs that we didn't tap into. Right. So there's definitely, um, gas in the tank for sure.

[00:46:55] Rob Bredow: for sure. Yeah. It's such a fun show. And even if you think you're a casual Abba fan, or maybe you, maybe you, uh, mistakenly think you don't know that many Abba songs, you're gonna be shocked when you go to the show that every single song is a song, you know? Or just about every single song is a song, you know?

And man, you know, we've talked a lot about the show that is in front of the audience, but the show that is the audience, the way the venue is designed to bring them in, the way that everyone is wearing sequin, not everyone, but uh, a good percentage of the audience is wearing sequence and is there to have. But to enjoy a rock show together. I mean, they bring the other half of the performance

[00:47:33] Svana Gisla: Oh yeah.

[00:47:34] Rob Bredow: dance floor was designed, I mean, everything was designed for this experience to

[00:47:38] Svana Gisla: Oh, it's amazing.

[00:47:39] Rob Bredow: of fun as a collective.

[00:47:40] Svana Gisla: It's absolutely amazing. The audience is phenomenal. And, and listen, I must have seen the show three, 400 Times. I've, I, I've never seen the same show because the audience brings something. The show on a Sunday afternoon is different from more Friday night. mean, every morning though, when they, the cleaners come in, it's like a fox got into the chicken coop.

There are feathers and sequins everywhere. But, but but it was a risk to have the dance floor, you see, because you know the digital cons, like people really have to buy into it, right? To, to be on the dance floor. And we needed the energy of the dance floor, and I think it was our first preview, we did three or four previews before opening night. The first preview was a 50% capacity, and we only invited the local residents, uh, just the people that lived around the arena because they'd been watching this spaceship being built for about a year. So we invited them, we letter drop them. And they came and, and not Abba fans not particularly wanting to be there, didn't pay for their tickets, just came to sort of have a skeptical look and very much arms folded and you know, it was a tough crowd. And then when Abba came onto the stage and the first song, what happened was the people on the floor rushed towards the stage.

[00:48:55] Rob Bredow: Wow.

[00:48:56] Svana Gisla: And I think could hear the collective sigh of relief coming from us all over London. I mean, it was a shoulder drop like I've never experienced. And we just, I mean, I started, me and Linda cried, I think it was just, we knew it was gonna work.

You see, just in that second, when they ran towards the stage, we thought

[00:49:18] Jenny Ely: it's ama it's amazing too, the range of fans that you see.

I was surprised

when I saw it. It, you know, you go to a concert from a band or an act that you know, and you kind of know what you're gonna see in the crowd. You're like, okay, this is, you know, what you're gonna see at a Metallica show. Or if you go to like a,

[00:49:32] Svana Gisla: Oh yeah.

[00:49:32] Jenny Ely: an R&B show or whatever. Like just the, the general age, whoever, like grew up with whatever. But going to Abba Voyage when i, I was in the middle of the dance floor and looking around and it was, it was every age range. Men, women, everybody partying together, everybody dressed up,

and everybody

loved the music. Like you said, whether you think you're an Abba fan or not, when you get in there, it's just a great show no matter what kind of music you like.

[00:49:54] Svana Gisla: Oh, it's incredible. I mean, my kids are 18 and, and, uh, no, 17 and 19. They're playing Abba in the clubs. You know, they find, they finish the night on, "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme", like the kids are still, you know,

[00:50:06] Ben Morris: pop Poppy. My sister, she's up for Newcastle. Uh, not my sister. What am I

[00:50:10] Svana Gisla: she's your daughter then?

[00:50:11] Ben Morris: gonna think that's funny when she hears that. No, no. She's, she's just finishing off in Newcastle. She said they, they played gimme, gimme three times on a, on a Friday or a Saturday

[00:50:20] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:50:20] Ben Morris: just pumping

[00:50:21] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:50:22] Ben Morris: they're all

[00:50:23] Svana Gisla: They're up kids in their twenties. You know, straight men in groups, they're having the best time. You know, there's always an audience group called the reluctant husband. They always start off with the arms folded and they go, how long am I gonna have to stay?

[00:50:39] Ben Morris: Totally.

[00:50:40] Svana Gisla: many times am I allowed to go to the bar? it really gonna be finished by 10 30? And then in the end, they are windmilling on the dance floor. Just having the best time

fail.

[00:50:51] Rob Bredow: they're

[00:50:52] Jenny Ely: the ones running to the

[00:50:53] Ben Morris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

[00:50:53] Jenny Ely: at the end.

[00:50:54] Ben Morris: Yeah,

[00:50:54] Rob Bredow: I gotta say it is so much fun. The show is so much fun. I, the first time I went to see it, I had seen the media. We had, we had sweated every detail. Ben and team had sweated every detail. And I, it, when it got extra stressful, I got, you know, enough of a, enough, uh, involved enough to where I knew the show pretty well. So I went as the, um, as the, uh, careful observer. 'cause I just wanted to see technically how everything came together. And during the first song, as Abba's starting to come out of the floor, I'm like, why am I, why are tears coming

[00:51:23] Svana Gisla: Yeah.

[00:51:24] Todd Vaziri: Uh.

[00:51:24] Rob Bredow: when I knew what was gonna happen? I know every magic trick, but it is just so emotional when you get everyone together.

And was there by myself just to observe, and I just had so much fun.

[00:51:34] Svana Gisla: We could, we should keep talking about sequins and immersive entertainment, uh, for another hour. But what we do need to draw this podcast to a close.

[00:51:40] The Martini

[00:51:40] Rob Bredow: So we'll, we'll end very appropriately on the martini, which is the last shot of the day on a film set, but a perfect way to end, um, a podcast on Abba Voyage.

So, uh, Todd, did you bring us a martini today?

[00:51:52] Todd Vaziri: sure did. Uh, if you're like me, uh, your friends and family come to you for, uh, tech buying advice, what, uh, what gadget should I buy? What should, what should I buy? This, the headphones, computers, whatever. And if you're, uh, in the Mac world, uh, the Apple Macintosh world, um, for laptops, it's been a little bit difficult to make a quick and easy recommendation for what to buy. There's, you know, a lot of variety in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Uh, lineups, which is good. It's good to have variety, but it was so hard for most people to just make a quick, easy recommendation of what to buy and when to buy it. Well, a couple of months ago, apple released the M4 MacBook Air, which is confidently the laptop that most everybody can use and enjoy for a long, long time. It hit that 9 99 US, uh, price point, which is very, really fantastic. It is. Way more powerful than almost anybody needs. Uh, obviously when you get into the pro needs, you, you might wanna bump the ram, you might wanna bump the storage, but for almost everybody, uh, the MacBook error is the right, uh, choice, uh, and the easy recommendation.

In fact, I just put in an order for my first laptop I've ever bought. I've always used desktops. And this was just so, um, attractive to me to have a a, a good portable that is super powerful that I know will last a long, long time. So the new MacBook Air M4 is my martini.

[00:53:34] Rob Bredow: Thank you Todd. Ben, did you bring a martini today?

[00:53:40] Ben Morris: It's, uh, it's not a technical martini, no. My, my advice, uh, I Well, I was just thinking, no, look, I'm gonna recommend something that actually we as a company have, have slight relationship too. So maybe this isn't appropriate. No, I've just finished watching all the series of the TV show Severance, and

[00:53:59] Rob Bredow: Oh

[00:54:00] Ben Morris: I just wanna say it's probably old news, but just been utterly away by it. It's absolutely wild. It's beautifully designed, filmed. everything. I haven't felt TV feel like that in a million years.

[00:54:17] Rob Bredow: yeah.

[00:54:17] Ben Morris: so I'm just gonna say, if you haven't seen it, if you're one of the two people on the planet who haven't seen it check in and, uh, and watch it. It's, it's, it's beautiful.

[00:54:27] Rob Bredow: Isn't it incredible? It what? The pacing of that show, it's so patient because it knows that you're just waiting for it to deliver.

[00:54:35] Ben Morris: I, I, I say to everyone, you don't, don't give up. Just keep, keep with

[00:54:41] Rob Bredow: uh,

[00:54:42] Ben Morris: keep pushing through anyway.

[00:54:43] Todd Vaziri: That's a good

[00:54:44] Rob Bredow: in some ways it has some similarities to ABBA Voyage 'cause it's a high concept sci-fi original show. That is not guaranteed to work, and it works incredibly well. And like, just like ABBA voyage not guaranteed to work, if the audience didn't bring it every night, it wouldn't have been the same thing, even if it was technically impressive.

And then the others that, that magic that happens. I feel like, I feel like both of these things, I think it's a great example, Ben.

[00:55:08] Todd Vaziri: and you try to describe

[00:55:09] Ben Morris: Cool.

[00:55:09] Todd Vaziri: it about both projects, you, you get a little flummoxed, it's

[00:55:12] Rob Bredow: You gotta see it.

[00:55:13] Ben Morris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:55:14] Svana Gisla: It is a good sign.

[00:55:15] Ben Morris: music as well.

[00:55:16] Rob Bredow: That's that great.

[00:55:18] Ben Morris: now

[00:55:18] Rob Bredow: That's

[00:55:18] Ben Morris: my family knows what defiant jazz is.

[00:55:21] Rob Bredow: that's

[00:55:21] Svana Gisla: did the music? Do you know?

[00:55:23] Ben Morris: Oh, they, they, they've got some, uh, music, uh, consultant. They,

[00:55:27] Svana Gisla: Oh, okay.

[00:55:27] Ben Morris: play all sorts of music.

[00:55:29] Rob Bredow: Yeah, it's fantastic. Jenny.

[00:55:32] Jenny Ely: Yeah, so, um, my martini this week is an author. I was gonna try to pick one book by this person, but I'm just obsessed with consuming everything by this writer. Right now. So I am a big fan of psychological horror. I love horror novels, anything that's psychological thriller. Um, and recently I've been reading Paul Trembley, who's an author from New England.

He's sort of in the vein of Stephen King, where, um, most, well, everything I've read so far takes place in New England and there's, you know, a little bit of interconnectivity in the stories. Um, but his writing is so good. The pacing is amazing. The stories unfold in ways that I've never seen anything unfold in psychological horror before.

And it's funny, um, the narrators for the audio books are fantastic. Um, if you wanna start somewhere with his books, I would go with head full of ghosts.

[00:56:20] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:56:21] Jenny Ely: is incredible. It's, it's my book to beat this year for my, my favorite book already. So I would start with that one. Um, everything I've read by him is good.

He does short stories as well. So, um, Paul Trembley, check it out if you're, if you're into horror.

[00:56:33] Rob Bredow: Great. We'll link to that in the show notes. Thanks Jenny. And, uh, I was gonna add on to Ben's, uh, we are doing a future episode of this podcast on severance. So, uh, something to look forward

[00:56:43] Svana Gisla: Ah,

[00:56:44] Rob Bredow: Uh, ILM visual effects supervised and did a bunch of work

[00:56:46] Svana Gisla: ah,

[00:56:47] Rob Bredow: show. So that'll be, uh, I think it's, Jenny is at our next planned episode.

It's coming up soon.

[00:56:51] Jenny Ely: Yep. It'll be the next one.

[00:56:53] Rob Bredow: Excellent. Uh, Svana, did you bring a martini or do you wanna pass?

[00:56:56] Svana Gisla: you know what? I will just take a real martini right now 'cause it's six o'clock in the uk and I will also take a little share of Todd's, um, apple vouchers that he's about to get sent for him for that.

[00:57:06] Todd Vaziri: Oh,

[00:57:08] Rob Bredow: Perfect.

[00:57:08] Todd Vaziri: Yeah.

[00:57:09] Ben Morris: thought.

[00:57:10] Svana Gisla: I'd like to, uh, I'd like, I'd like a cut in that, please, Todd.

[00:57:13] Rob Bredow: That's perfect.

[00:57:14] Todd Vaziri: any come, I promise, I'll let you in

[00:57:17] Svana Gisla: Thank you. I appreciate it. I'd like to get one of those, you know, Apple, uh, Mac things.

[00:57:23] Rob Bredow: That's perfect. Um, my martini today is a show called Game Changer,

[00:57:28] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:57:28] Rob Bredow: which is a game show where the game is different every episode. And they don't tell the, the guy who runs it, Sam Reich doesn't tell the players what the game is, and they have to discover it as they go along it.

Um, dropout is a, a channel where it's like a subscription service. I think they've got eight or 10 shows on this, on this service that they're really all very, very funny. Like Game Changer is. Game Changer is, it's not really about who wins the game, it's really about how much fun these incredible improv comedy actors can have.

Putting together a game show that is new every time and it's all improvised. It's very, very funny. think dropout costs five bucks a month here in the us, uh, to subscribe to. And you might wonder if it's worth five bucks a month just for a, subscription, another subscription for like another 20 or show so shows.

But these, the, the small team of people makes a lot of really fun shows.

[00:58:18] Todd Vaziri: Hmm.

[00:58:19] Rob Bredow: Uh, another show on this service is called Dimension 20. So if you do, if you know what a D 20 is, the dice that are used for role playing games, um, then this is for you. If you don't know what a D 20 is, then I'm geekier than you, which is probably possible. Um, but yeah, I, I highly recommend Sam Reich and Game Changer.

[00:58:39] Outro

[00:58:39] Rob Bredow: So thank you Ben. Thank you Svana for joining us

[00:58:42] Svana Gisla: Thank you.

[00:58:42] Rob Bredow: on today's episode of Lighter Darker. We're really, really happy to get to talk ABBA Voyage, and congratulations again on the show.

[00:58:48] Svana Gisla: Thank you so much.

[00:58:49] Ben Morris: Thank you very much.

[00:58:50] Rob Bredow: And thank you everyone for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast.

If you've got a question for the show, drop us an email at lighterdarker@ilm.com and visit ilm.com/lighterdarker for our social media contact, as well as the transcripts and all the show notes for this show and all the shows we've done so far. you like the show, like and subscribe, do all the right things.

Leave us a comment on YouTube or Apple Podcasts, and please let your friends know about the podcast. And we want to thank Industrial Light and Magic for hosting the Lighter Darker podcast. The show is produced by Jenny Ely and myself, Rob Bredow. Today's episode has been edited by David Dovell and we wanna thank ILM's PR team led by Greg Grusby, who work behind the scenes to make all of this happen for us. So thank again for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast. Until next time, May your pixels be both lighter and darker.