U2’s live performances at Sphere heralded a new dawn in live entertainment. Those 700,000 fans able to attend the extended residency came away gob smacked. It certainly took a band with the vision and scope of U2 to leverage the incredibly advanced technology of Sphere, but subsequent artists have shown that is probably more about Sphere’s technology in terms of the overall experience. The other bands that have played Sphere (Phish, Dead & Co, Eagles) are not strangers to the live stage, so each can hold their own in almost any venue. Nonetheless, Sphere stands head and shoulders above most any other venue on the planet.
Therefore, it was interesting to see a filmed recreation of the U2 concert, shot in and presented at the only venue currently capable of showing it.
Most attendees concurred that it was not too long after the lights go down that you imagine the four Irishmen are indeed performing right in front of you. Having seen the band perform in its original run, at the filmed version within several songs I leaned over to my wife and said this is incredibly close to the actual experience.
The broad panorama of the screen and the incredible fidelity of the audio delivered on what I remembered at the concert last October on the second night of the band’s residency.
The film starts with the EDM EuroThump motif, much like the live DJ on the back of the utilitarian East German Trabant auto that opened the live gigs.
Shot across several nights (there is no attempt to hide the band’s sartorial switches), the film’s setlist generally tracks the early shows, with the fluid middle third represented here by a handful of acoustic versions. By shooting with fans heads visible along the lower edge, you are indeed immersed into the concert.
Bono commands the stage as always, and Edge needs do very little other than hold all the melodic elements together, no small feat given the depth and breadth of the songs.
“Atomic City” (written for the Vegas residency) deftly deconstructs the city, taking it back to the desert whence it came. The band’s homage to Vegas references the city’s most famous entertainers Elvis and Sinatra with some well-placed lyrics.
The film “V-U2” was directed by Morleigh Steinberg and The Edge, and it is an amazing distillation of the 40 sold-out “U2:UV” shows that played from September 2023 through March 2024 at Sphere. During our screening, there was no one seated in the first section, only in the middle section. For the film that is probably the ideal Goldilocks choice, as it is somewhat overwhelming being so close in the first section and you seem quite distant in the third section.
“V-U2” is the first film ever to be shot entirely with Big Sky, the groundbreaking ultra-high-resolution camera system developed by Sphere Entertainment to capture content exclusively for the venue. A few geeky statistics begin to explain the phenomenal experience of watching the world’s highest-resolution screen:
- Big Sky’s single-lens system boasts the world’s sharpest cinematic lenses and achieves the extreme optical requirements necessary to match Sphere’s 16K x 16K immersive display.
- Big Sky’s single sensor is a 316-megapixel, 3” x 3” HDR image sensor capable of a 40X resolution increase over 4K cameras.
- Big Sky can capture content up to 120 frames per second at the 18K square format. and
I expect the energy needed for each screening is rather more than seeing a film at your local Bijou.
Having seen the premiere of “U23D” at Cannes in 2007, I know how the band leans into technologies. It struck me then as perhaps the first time U2 sat with an audience to watch themselves perform. But as Bono said to me after that premiere ‘it sounded like shite.’
No such complaints were heard by him or anyone else at Sphere for “V-U2.”
In that nowhere else will the film be exhibited with this level of fidelity, it is an amazing site-specific effort.
It also begins to answer the question how the Sphere owners will get enough bodies through the venue to recoup its staggering $2.3 billion cost.
More detail and tickets here.
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