News of March 12, 2013
Ten Weeks for Coachella: Digital Domain Looks Back at the Tupac Projection
Ten weeks instead of over a year: At SXSW, Ed Ulbrich explained how the Coachella figure was created. A year later, The Source asks about the ethics.
Most of the time, the effects studio Digital Domain recreates the face of a living actor and has more than a year to do so. For the Tupac figure from the 2012 Coachella festival, barely ten weeks remained. On March 12, 2013, Billboard reported on a talk at the SXSW music festival in Austin: there, Ed Ulbrich described how the figure was created. For the studio, the work had been unusual: they knew it would be big, but not how big.
Not a Hologram, but an Old Mirror Trick
Technically, it was not a hologram, but “Pepper’s Ghost”—an old reflection trick, just updated to modern standards. A month later, on April 18, The Source asked on the first anniversary whether it was acceptable to recreate an artist’s likeness for one’s own benefit.
How it came about and what debate followed can be found on the hologram page and in the April 15, 2012 report.