U2 Numb U2

January 30, 2008

By Cahir O’Doherty

CATHERINE Owens, the Irish visual designer behind each of U2’s worldwide tours for the past 15 years, and the co-director (with Mark Pellington) of U2 3D, the concert film about the celebrated Irish rock band that’s now playing, first began her work by shaping the look and feel of the band’s “ZooTV” tour in 1992.

In a real sense, Owens became a fifth member of the band in the early 1990s, because her background in multimedia (sculpture, video art, sound design, photography) went on to serve as a powerful inspiration for U2’s subsequent “PopMart,” “Elevation” and “Vertigo” tours.

Working closely with the band for years, Owens became familiar with their artistic sensibilities, and that made her the natural choice to direct U2 3D, the new concert movie about the band, and the first ever film of their show in digital 3D.

This week she told the Irish Voice how the project got started. “The band really are big fans of high technology, so when they got the chance to film in digital 3D they jumped at it,” she said.

“Having worked with them as their visual content provider for over 15 years now we already knew about their stage presence really well, we know how they look on stage. I just knew the 3D medium would be a good medium to reflect that show in.”

3D may not be an entirely new medium, because we live in it after all, but dispel any lingering memories of cheesy1950s era sci-fi 3D movies and prepare to be dazzled. The fact is, 3D has entered the digital age and the advance in the technology is literally stunning.

“We didn’t commit to filming in 3D until we saw the test screening by the company that makes the 3D cameras. They made a test with the NFL for a Super Bowl game,” she said.

“It looked amazing and that just clinched it. I could tell that if we really made it ours we’d get what we wanted out of it.”

As U2 played Buenos Aires, Argentina, Owens and her co-director Mark Pellington called the camera shots from a control room where they were looking at a bank of monitors. The filming process was exactly like a 2D shoot in most respects, with cameras directed at each of the band members.

Owens made the decision at the beginning to focus exclusively on the band’s performance. There was no Spinal Tap intimate behind the scenes shots of how many trucks it takes to carry the set, or the band members arriving bleary eyed at another foreign airport.

“There’s a fine line between shooting and ending up in the Spinal Tap world. We really just felt like U2’s live performance is their strength, so why not play to it? We decided to leave all the story telling to someone else,” Owens said.

It was a wise decision. U2 3D rediscovers the genius of the band live, so much so that at times it feels like a reintroduction.

The spell is never broken. The achievement is all the more impressive because technically, 3D filming is grueling to film and edit. Added to that are U2’s own standards, which are high, because what might pass in the normal world won’t pass in U2 world.

“U2 are very hands on, they’re very involved in the editing process and they insist on signing off on everything,” Owens reveals.

“We’d come to New York with scenes for their approval, for example. Or we’d meet them at home in Dublin and we’d sit in their kitchen and get a yes or a no. Bono is very tech savvy so we even sent him QuickTime files to approve online. We ran the gamut of how you could possibly sign off on these things.”

Longtime band watchers will not be surprised to hear that U2 is a democracy, not a kingdom. Creatively Bono and Owens have a fairly strong connection, but once that conversation ends, U2 members Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen kick in. The band are known to hold strong opinions, but interestingly they never get involved in conversations about the direction of Owens film.

“Bono doesn’t get involved in directing at all. His only question to me was the same as the entire band’s — what direction can you give us? My answer to that was just do what you normally do as a band, but do it a little more consciously. That was all the direction they got.”

The film is visually thrilling, raising the roof and reintroducing the band to longtime fans and even to themselves. Bono and Edge have commented that this is the first time they have really been able to see themselves live, and Owens is quite sure that those observations will follow them through to the next album. Conversations about the next tour have already begun.

“In the few seconds were I see Bono at various events — before he gets pulled away by five people — he’s always telling me we’ve got to get together, he’s got loads more ideas about the next show. Meanwhile, I would seriously suggest that anyone who’s watching the new film should dance in the aisles, if they’re so inclined.”

U2 3D is now playing in select cinemas nationwide.