The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

The Sunday Times May 29, 2022 5

NEWS

For a 90-minute pop concert, putting on

Abba’s new gig took a monumental

effort. The band’s return, in virtual per-

formances in east London, which earned

rave reviews from critics last week, has

cost about £140 million, meaning they

will need to play to almost full houses to

turn a profit.

Benny Andersson’s son Ludvig, who is

the show’s music producer, said last

week that he needs “lots of people to

come and see it for a very long time”.

Why haven’t Elvis and the Beatles done

the same thing? Because it is “so bloody

expensive”, according to Benny.

The creators of Abba Voyage — not a

traditional concert, but not quite a film

either — are desperate to blend the real

and virtual worlds to captivate audiences

who long to see the band that has sold

almost 400 million records play live and

last performed in public in 1982.

To turn the four Swedish superstars

into virtual characters took five years and

a total of one billion computing hours.

More than 1,000 visual effects experts

created millions of frames of footage after

trawling through thousands of photos

and films to get their late-1970s looks just

right.

New live performances were filmed

over five weeks by 160 cameras using

motion capture technology so a team of

animators could bring the band mem-

bers’ avatars — inevitably dubbed Abba-

tars — to life.

It took more than a year to painstak-

ingly build figures of Agnetha Fältskog,

Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and

Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Industrial Light and

Magic (ILM), the visual effects production

company founded by George Lucas, the

Star Wars creator, that has worked on

films including Jurassic World and No

Time to Die, got the job in its first foray

into music.

Ben Morris, ILM’s Oscar-winning crea-

tive director, who supervised visual

effects for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and

de-aged Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci for

Martin Scorcese’s gangster epic The Irish-

man, said that he did not want people tak-

ing too much notice of the cutting-edge

technology.

Liam Kelly Arts Correspondent

We k n ow

their

entire

bodies

Health and Care Excellence.

Mohamed Taha, 33, set up

the firm with colleagues from

the École Centrale de Lyon in

France, where he worked as a

nanotechnology researcher,

following his own frustrating

experience with fertility tests.

He said: “I was prescribed

medication for my kidneys

that could affect my sperm

count and I wanted to get

tested, but at every clinic I got

different results. I wanted to

understand this and see if we

could improve it.”

Although the Mojo test

does not confirm whether a

man is infertile, it does give

full results on the health and

quality of sperm including

mobility, volume, number

and health. The higher the

figures, the better the

chances of a man’s partner

conceiving naturally.

It also offers personalised

advice on improving sperm

quality, such as through diet

and exercise.

Customers order online

and receive a box through the

post with QR codes used to

provide instructions. When

ready, a courier collects the

sample at a pre-arranged

time, and takes it to the

company’s laboratory in

Shoreditch, east London.

The technology has been

CE-marked as a medical

device for use in Europe and

performs tests at 97 per cent

accuracy, validated against

WHO standards.

The company claims it has

already carried out hundreds

of tests since launching in

Sweden last year and in the

UK in April. Results are ready

within 48 hours or less.

Taha said: “Lots of people

are waiting longer to start a

family, well into their thirties,

and don’t think about testing

their sperm until they are sick

or they can’t conceive.”

At a traditional fertility

clinic men can expect to pay

between £200 and £500 for a

test as well needing to go to

appointments at the clinic.

@ShaunLintern

A new home test allows men

to check the quality and

health of their sperm with a

laboratory-grade analysis

powered by AI that delivers

results in a matter of hours.

The team of physicists and

tech experts behind the

company, which is called

Mojo, are hoping the £150 test

will end the embarrassment

many men feel about getting

their sperm tested in a clinic.

One in seven couples in the

UK are affected by fertility

problems, with 7 per cent of

men estimated to be infertile,

according to guidelines from

the National Institute for

Shaun Lintern Health Editor

Mail order sperm tests just the

ticket for self-conscious men

‘US casts a black man as president

while Britain balks at Friar Tuck’

The actor David Harewood

has revealed he is

“disappointed” with the parts

he is offered in the UK and

feels that his race means he is

“limited by other people’s

perceptions of what I can be”.

Harewood, 56, who is best

known for playing CIA boss

David Estes in the American

television series Homeland,

said black actors were offered

meatier roles in the US.

“It has been disappointing

coming back here, the sort of

roles that have been coming

my way,” he said. “You kind

of go: ‘I would have done that

Liam Kelly

Arts Correspondent

maybe ten years ago, but not

now.’ The roles I get offered

and the roles that are really

exciting come from America.”

He told Desert Island Discs,

to be broadcast today on BBC

Radio 4: “I can be the head

of the CIA, I can be a

president, whereas [in

Britain] they would be

nervous about casting a

black prime minister.

They were nervous

when I played Friar

Tuck [in the BBC’s Robin

Hood in 2009]... ‘Can we do

this? Is it allowed?’

“Whereas in America they

go: ‘Yeah, Sherlock Holmes —

let’s make Watson an Asian

woman’, and in 24 they

made the president black

before there was a [real]

black president. There is

a ‘can-do’ element to

American casting

in drama,

whereas

sometimes I

feel here

there is a

hesitancy to

do that.”

Born in

Small Heath,

Birmingham, Harewood was

cast as Estes in 2011 and lived

in the US for about ten years.

“I found a strength and

acknowledgement there in

my career as a black British

actor that I had never had

before,” he said.

His last leading role on

British TV was in 2016, as an

American spy in a BBC

adaptation of John le Carré’s

The Night Manager.

About 79 per cent of non-

white actors in the UK said

roles they auditioned for

“stereotype their ethnicities”,

according to a report last year

by the Sir Lenny Henry

Centre for Media Diversity, at

Birmingham City University.

be the head

n be a

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ould be

casting a

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vous

Friar

woman’, and in 24

made the preside

before there wa

black president.

a ‘can-do’ elem

American

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ther

hes

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B

Sm

David

Harewood says

there would be

“nervousness”

about him

playing the PM

foundation for the avatars’ faces and bod-

ies. It was, he said, like “forensic archae-

ology” that allowed his team to “under-

stand all the different angles” of the band

and “interesting expressions that might

not have been the perfect cover for Roll-

ing Stone, but it gives us all of that cover-

age”. ILM’s designers also digitised rolls

of film footage that were locked away in

the vaults of Universal Music, Abba’s

record label, as well as hundreds of pic-

tures from their 1979 Wembley Arena gigs

— the last time they played in the UK — to

make the avatars as realistic as possible.

Abba’s last public performance came

three years later in Stockholm.

The haul, Morris said, “informs us a lot

about the structures of their faces, how

they smile, how they react when they’re

not in front of cameras” which allowed

the designers to align their sculptures of

the band’s faces with a photograph.

He added: “Then we could mix

between the two, swap and fade. Have we

got the nose perfectly right? Are the ear-

lobes the right level? Is the lip curl just

right? We did that over tens of thousands

of pictures so our sculptors could go in

and refine the whole look of the faces.”

The band, now aged between 72 and

77, spent five weeks filming in Stockholm

wearing motion capture suits. Younger

body doubles stood in for them during

the more vigorous routines.

Even then motion capture technology

is still not perfect, and ILM used move-

ment specialists to work on everything

from finger length to how each singer

gripped their microphone. “We under-

stand the entire physical structure of

Tickets

cost

from £

to £

mitochondria, eventually

leading it to rupture and the

cell to die.

NRG, which was founded

in 2018, has now designed

molecules that keep the pore

closed — a kind of chemical

sticking plaster — which the

scientists believe could slow

down or even halt the

progress of Parkinson’s.

Sticking plaster for brain could beat Parkinson’s disease

A scientific breakthrough

which promises to protect the

“batteries” of brain cells

could pave the way for the

first treatment to halt the

progress of Parkinson’s

disease.

NRG Therapeutics, a

Cambridge start-up, has

designed a potential drug to

protect the mitochondria, the

energy source inside every

human cell. The treatment

works as a “sticking plaster”

to keep closed a hole in the

mitochondria that has been

identified as a key cause of

Parkinson’s.

Neuroscientists in the past

15 years have made significant

progress in understanding

the role the breakdown of

mitochondria in brain cells

plays in the disease’s

development.

But NRG has now worked

out how to stop that process

happening, a discovery that

could see the first patients

receive treatments in trials

within three years.

The discovery is so

promising that it has now

attracted a £2.7 million grant

from Innovate UK, a

government agency, on top of

previous charitable

investments from the charity

Parkinson’s UK and the

Michael J Fox Foundation.

The American actor was

diagnosed with Parkinson’s in

1991 at the age of 29.

Around 145,000 Britons

have Parkinson’s, which

causes tremors, slow

movements and muscle

rigidity. More than one

million people alive in Britain

today will develop it later in

life. Despite years of trials,

there is no cure and no way to

stop it progressing.

The new development

hinges on the discovery of a

direct link between

Parkinson’s and damage to

mitochondria in the

substantia nigra, the part of

the brain that controls the

release of dopamine. A

reduction in dopamine has

long been known to be

responsible for many of the

symptoms of the disease.

Researchers found a hole,

or pore, in the wall of the

mitochondrial

membrane allows

calcium to flow into the

Crucially, they have shown

that the molecules can get

through the blood-brain

barrier, the brain’s natural

defence mechanism, which

many drugs fail to permeate.

Dr Neil Miller, chief

executive of NRG

Therapeutics, said in the next

12 months the company will

narrow down which of its

molecules is the best to be

used as the drug, which will

be in the form of a pill.

Further testing will follow

before the first human studies

start in roughly three years.

“We’d like to be in phase one

trials by 2025,” he said. “I

think we need to be clear that

we’re not going to cure

Parkinson’s, but we hope to

halt or substantially slow the

progression of the disease.

And that would be hugely

valuable because there is no

disease-modifying treatment

for Parkinson’s.”

If the drug is successful, it

would be expected to work

for all forms of Parkinson’s,

he said.

Parkinson’s UK is so

confident in NRG’s approach

that it has taken a £2 million

stake in the biotech company.

Dr Arthur Roach, director of

research at Parkinson’s UK

and a board member of NRG,

said: “Slowly, day by day,

[Parkinson’s patients’]

condition is getting worse

and there are no treatments

available that can slow this

progression. NRG

understands the challenges of

designing medications that

can get to where they are

needed, inside the brain.”

By the final stage of

Parkinson’s, sufferers are

often in a wheelchair or

bedridden, needing 24-hour

care, have difficulty

swallowing and speaking,

and often experiencing

hallucinations and delusions.

Richard Hebdon, director

for health and life sciences at

Innovate UK, said:

“Discovering and developing

new medicines for brain

diseases is very challenging

and there is a very real need

for innovation in this area.

Innovate UK is therefore

pleased and proud to

be supporting NRG

Therapeutics to develop new

medicines for devastating

neurodegenerative

disorders.”

Ben Spencer Science Editor

“We don’t ever want the audience to

be wowed by the technology,” the

51-year-old said. “We want them to be

wowed by the experience and the feeling

of the moment.”

A purpose-built 3,000-capacity arena

opened on the edge of Stratford’s Queen

Elizabeth Olympic Park on Friday. The

Ikea-style flat-pack design means that the

Abba Arena could be taken to another

venue after it leaves London. The band is

selling tickets, which cost from £21 for

auditorium seats to £143 for more inti-

mate dance booths, for an initial run until

next May. Andersson has revealed that

more than 380,000 tickets have already

been sold to see the avatars play hits such

as Fernando, Lay All Your Love on Me and

Waterloo.

The LED screen in the Abba Arena is

almost 85m wide and 10m high, with

65 million pixels rendering the life-sized

figures almost lifelike. The screen ren-

ders 15 times more pixels than a film,

Morris said, which means the technologi-

cal feat is “like running 10-15 films all at

the same time”. A live ten-piece band

plays at one side of the stage.

Since the project was announced last

summer, the avatars have often been

termed holograms but Morris “emphati-

cally” insisted that they are not. Holo-

grams of the late rapper Tupac Shakur

and the soul singer Whitney Houston gar-

nered mixed reviews after they “per-

formed” live on stage in recent years.

Rather than being projected in 3D, the

two-dimensional Abba avatars appear on

the LED screen; lighting trickery gives the

screen depth.

“Technologically, there wasn’t the

ability to create these guys as holograms

of human size. We investigated lots of dif-

ferent options for that,” said Morris. “A

hologram is the appearance of a three-

dimensional object that as you move

around it and your view changes, the per-

spective changes. You can get small ones

that exist on tables, but they don’t have

full colour, they’re not perfect.”

After being approached by the pro-

ducer Svana Gisla in 2018, Morris and his

team settled on recreating Abba from

their pomp in the late 1970s and trawled

through thousands of original, unseen

photograph and film negatives as the

their anatomy, their bodies — everything.

We had to learn all of the bone lengths,”

said Morris. “We’re pushing and pushing

to get it more and more believable.”

The show is also rendered at more

than double the frame rate of the 24

frames-per-second movie standard to

make the avatars seem more realistic.

The avatars have five costumes during

the show — from flared trousers to jump-

suits — with each one’s name across the

chest in diamante, by designers including

Dolce & Gabbana. Every outfit had to be

created in the real world and used in a full

dress rehearsal by the stand-ins before it

could appear in the show so that the ava-

tar designers would know how the mate-

rial would move.

“It’s a creative process but also a scien-

tific process. You have to understand the

weave of a fabric and why in one direc-

tion it will stretch and fold in a different

way than another,” said Morris. “Even

when you sew a sequin on it puts a

tiny bit of tension in the fabric

and all of those tensions and

threads had to be built in there

so that it looked real.”

Getting the avatars on screen,

with some instances of multiple angles

being seen at once, was more challenging

than even the biggest-budget CGI block-

buster. “When we make films or TV, we

tend to work in a very linear timeline: you

have one image on screen, you edit and

cut and shots vary from a few frames to

maybe a minute,” said Morris. “Here we

had to sustain not only one song, some-

times multiple songs back to back. In a

normal shot, we would sustain 125 frames

of action: dinosaurs, lightsabers, Joe

Pesci, you name it. In this, we had to sus-

tain 15,000 frames of performance with

no break. There’s nowhere to hide.”

He added: “In film you have one shot

of actors and we don’t care if our cloth

simulation or our hair doesn’t look good

on the back of somebody’s neck, because

you never see it. In this we had multiple

views the whole time, so the entire physi-

cal character had to be perfect.”

Hairdressers in the real and virtual

worlds recreated the band’s 1970s long

hair, even on Andersson and Ulvaeus’s

avatars, which sways naturally as they

dance across the stage. Muscles bulge

and neck tendons and larynxes move

when they are singing. “All of that was

built into these characters,” said Morris.

“We don’t ever want you to know that,

but it gives an integrity to the physical

performance that you see. We wouldn’t

have started it if we couldn’t have

achieved that.”

While the 20-song setlist, a mix of Sev-

enties hits and songs from their new

album, will be the same for each perform-

ance, there is some flexibility built into

the show and there are technicians con-

trolling when the music starts. Each band

member addresses the crowd directly to

talk about how pleased they are to “be

there” and give background on why they

wrote certain songs. Ulvaeus said that he

wrote Does Your Mother Know when he

was propositioned at a bar.

“Who knows how long an audience is

going to clap? Who knows how long

they’re going to cry,” said Morris. “Those

moments are almost more complicated

to consider than the songs themselves.”

If the Abbatars prove a hit, will that

open the door to similar projects involv-

ing the likes of the Rolling Stones, Elvis or

the Beatles? “It’ll push ideas — a lot of

people are sitting, watching and waiting,”

said Morris.

Just don’t call them holograms.

@IAmLiamKelly

Virtual Abba’s

real worries

over money,

money, money

The Abbatar show cost £140m, so

they’ll have to ‘play’ to full houses

each night to turn a profit

In parallel, for five weeks

160 cameras filmed Abba’s

performance on stage while

wearing motion capture

suits. A younger set of body

doubles was used for the

more vigorous routines

2

HOW THEY CREATED

AUTOMATED AGNETHA

The creators trawled

through thousands

of photographs and

hours of film to start

building the avatars’

faces and bodies

1

Digital sculptors worked

on the finer details, such

as how Benny and Bjorn’s

hands behave when they

play their instruments,

making muscles bulge

and the larynx move

when the avatars sing

4

Five virtual costumes for

each avatar were created

in real life and a full dress

rehearsal captured so that

the creators could see

how the fabrics behaved

while moving

3

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Michael J Fox was

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Parkinson’s