This is it

Sunday night we watched Michael Jackson on Blu-ray - now on my 2 TB server. What a surprise! All the publicity said it was just rehearsal and backstage stuff. The info on IMDB just lists two camerapersons: cinematography by Sandrine Orabona & Tim Patterson.

Click photo - Tim on the left - Sandrine on the right - but who shot this HD movie?

I know what a two camera shoot looks like, we do them all the time. In fact the basic Tim & Sandrine setup is the same as we use - one (Sandrine) on a wide shot - the other closer (in this case Tim was sitting down so his camera was low).

Then the surprise, there are lots of shots of the singers, drummer, keyboard. Come on - they were done later I'll bet.

So only one male person shooting. Oh yeah ...

That's not Tim - who is fair with no mustache (see first photo - large)

Next surprise is that to feed the projected video there was a third camera - shooting standard def. not HD. Finally, a lot of sequences have a wide shot HD camera. That's four cameras - for MJ's private collection. Four? Huh? When you think that it was just a rehearsal and they had no clue that the star was going to die, it's all pretty amazing. Someone's not telling all.

Anyhow the final result, which I think has a lot of "post death" re-enactments by singers, musicians - maybe the dancers too, looks terrific. It's a great piece of work - and Michael looks in good health and ready to perform in London. He's amazing for a 50 year old.

Here's my theory: the organizers were really worried that MJ wouldn't be up to the demands of the live events in London - after all he'd been away for almost 10 years. They never thought he'd die - just have a breakdown. So they covered the rehearsals with many more than the two lone cameras (as advertised) - I mean the cost of extra cameras is nothing. Even then, they did this low key - small EX-3 handheld cameras on stage. Other cameras out of sight or used discreetly.

When the worst happened, the video was called "a record for MJ's personal use." It's hard to believe that Michael needed "hundreds of hours" of rehearsals - even if he did - a three/four/five camera shoot is pretty useless unless it's edited. Was it all planned to be edited just for Michael?

Let's face it - the standard def. camera shooting for the rear screen projection would have been enough.