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The brief return of Paul Arden
Posted by Eliza Williams, 7 July 2010, 11:10 Permalink Comments (10)
The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase at the Cannes Lions festival had an unusual presenter this year... Paul Arden. The legendary creative, who died in 2008, appeared as a spookily realistic 3D hologram. CR finds out how it was done...
While in previous years the Saatchi & Saatchi showcase has had dramatic, gala openings, this year's one started off deceptively simple. Richard Myers took to the stage to introduce the event, noting that it was 20 years since the first S&S Directors' Showcase took place, and that it had been Arden that had presented it back in 1990. As can be seen in the film above, Myers then welcomed Arden to join him on stage.
The Arden hologram was created by Square Zero production company in London, who conjured him up via a "combination of footage, a specially shot body double, a specially recorded voice double, facial motion capture with additional lip-synch and also CGI modelling on some of the features," according to director Najma Bhatti.
"We felt it was important to use at least some footage, so that it really was Paul Arden and not a body double or a complete CGI model," Bhatti continues. "The upper part of the face is from real footage which underwent quite a number of processes before we could use it in the final piece. It was taken from an interview where the camera moved around quite fast and Paul moved backwards and forwards whilst speaking, so all the footage had to be stabillised considerably. Also, as there was so little material, we had to keep re-using it in order to create the duration we needed for his speech."
Instead of using real recordings of Arden's voice in the piece, Square Zero used them simply as reference material for a voice artist. "We studied Paul's interviews at length in order to direct the voice artist to emulate his voice as closely as possible and also add in all the signature pauses and hesitations that were characteristic of his speech," explains Bhatti. "The voice casting was quite tough and we tried out Steven Berkoff and Paul's son Christian before going with Peter Temple, who did an amazing job." Despite all the high-tech wizardry involved in the creating the hologram, Square Zero used an old-fashioned technique, Pepper's Ghost, to project the Arden hologram into the theatre.
After opening the event, the Arden hologram returned at the close to sign off, before disappearing in a puff of smoke and dropping the microphone. The whole effect was quite uncanny, with the audience not really sure whether to cheer or sit in reverential silence. The Arden family gave their permission at the start of the process, but were then largely uninvolved in the making of the hologram. Bhatti understandably therefore describes the first showing to the family as "unnerving". However, their reaction was positive. "After we had finished the piece, Toni, Paul's wife asked to see it in our demo space before it went out in Cannes," she explains. "So we conducted a rather nerveracking viewing with Toni, their son, grandchildren and two of Paul's best friends. We were told by his family that 'Paul would have loved it', which was really the biggest compliment of all."
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10 Comments
This really is quite special, its great to see the very cutting edge in digital technology being used to showcase the words of a man who Inspired so many to push the boundaries in creativity.
Wonderful.
2010-07-07 22:29:09
I met Paul Arden when he visited New Zealand.
At our ad agency he stopped by and did a presentation for us since he had an old friend working there.
Paul? He was extremely good at his job, brilliant even, and knew about creativity in depth. He showed us models that he'd used in photography who were not so much beautiful as odd, and unusual with great personalities - personality usually missing in the usual barbie doll models, and in fact some were verging on aristocratic.
But I'm less happy to report that he was also very pleased with himself and constantly trumpeted his success at being the first ever copywriter to earn over one hundred thousand pounds a year as a salary.
His ego went before him the entire time he was here. His status was of immense importance to him it seemed, and his constant self positioning ('well up') in the English class structure was met with blank stares of non-comprehension here. He couldn't quite get why we did not immediately go into grovel mode.
Not withstanding, there is no doubt that the work he produced stands head and shoulders above many. I imagine the high artist in him was what brought about this odd hubris.
I'll admit that the only problem with my back-handed compliment here is that in all fairness he cannot answer it ... or can he?
Jonathan
2010-07-09 05:38:01
Is it just me that finds something troubling about this?
Who owns the right to a dead persons identity?
What’s to stop the owners of Arden 2.0 manipulating it in a manner which he would not appreciate or sanction?
Selling crisps, advocating a political position, appearing in an abusive film?
Is it potential money talking rather than Arden? It seems to be using a dead person’s imagery to highlight a fascinating and powerful technological capacities to potential clients, while presenting it as a homage (in the same way weapons manufacturers sell their wares as ‘security’ devices?).
2010-07-09 14:01:23
wrong paul - jonathan - i was an artdirector.
2010-07-10 11:15:57
Spooky!
Bip
2010-07-10 20:48:25
Following from MLA's comments, this could easily be step one on the resurrection of someone like Michael Jackson for the tour that never was.
Interesting to see how people could easily spin money out of something like this.
2010-07-12 10:29:59
isn't this just a bit wrong?
2010-07-15 11:14:40
totally stupid. paul would have loved it.
2010-07-20 17:30:34
Representation gives way to simulation, through the production and reproduction of image.
‘By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials--worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real world for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself--such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance.’
-- Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation.
2010-07-22 18:59:49
Hauntology: ‘Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past, even if the apparition represents someone who has been dead for many centuries, for the simple reason that a ghost is clearly not the same thing as the person who shares its proper name.’
-- Buse, P., & Scott, A., (ed's), Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History, London : Macmillan, 1999
2011-04-20 12:38:30
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