Poll - 3D Alizée light variety show - how much would you pay?

[FanDeAliFee]

Here are the details for a hypothetical, highly personal, potentially intercontinental remote show, which for most audience members is perhaps even more intimate than being at the actual show-place in the flesh.

(This outline is inspired by the discussion starting with the post here (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?p=170635).)

How much would you pay to spend over 90 entertaining minutes with Alizée, knowing this slice of life would never be recorded and sold, much less pirated via file-sharing archives? Here's the deal:

You sit with 250 others in a comfy movie theater, wearing 3D glasses which give you a live front-row-center video feed of Alizée, wherever you sit. She can also hear and see the audience via a return video link. An instrumental medley of her songs is played during the seating period as an overture.

In the first hour of the show, Alizée entertains you with a light variety program, which includes some of the following:<blockquote> Alizée ALWAYS sings (or at least lip-syncs) at least
three songs, one of which is the most requested one the
audience selected from among her repertoire catalog when
they bought their tickets online. (Voting costs an extra dollar.)

> Alizée may do a dance or artistic athletic routine.

> Alizée may do a dramatic reading.

> Alizée may demonstrate her golf-putting skill (and even
chide a ringer who coughs as she takes her stroke!)

> Alizée may do a card trick.

> Alizée may recite a poem.

> Alizée may have the audience applaud to choose their favorite
Alizée hairstyle, illustrated with photos she flips.

> Alizée may tell a joke or funny story or even engage
in a whipped-cream pie-throwing contest with an assistant.

> Alizée may have the audience applaud to choose their favorite
Alizée dress fashion, illustrated with photos she flips.

> Alizée may play Pictionary, where she sketches something
and the first person to shout the right answer wins an album.

> Alizée may comment on a current popular TV series, movie, etc.

> Alizée may narrate a short slide show which depicts Paris or
Corsica or snapshots from her music videos or concerts, etc.

> Alizée may show her most recent favorite photo from among
those that her Dad shot, and explain why she likes it.

> Alizée may teach the audience how to count to ten in French
(She teaches Spanish for French audiences?)

> Alizée may conduct a sing-along of a popular or traditional
song which the audience surely knows and for which it also
gets lyrical subtitles.

> Alizée may play Lucas' Revenge!<blockquote> Alizée is blindfolded by an assistant.

The audience then votes by applause which one from
among about 5 to 10 food samples, each of equal weight,
is tossed into a blender along with a half cup of milk,
to be blended and then tasted. Alizée is given only one
guess, and if she guesses wrong, she is given a minor
comedic penalty, which may even make her nose scrunch!
These edibles can include:

Nutella
Gummy bears
seaweed
lemon
anchovies
pasta
Big Mac
charcuterie (very Corsican)
fig jam (very Corsican)
brocciu (very Corsican)

If you put lemon or anchovies in her milk, don't be surprised
if later in the show, she tells you how sadistic you SOBs are!</blockquote></blockquote>After the main hour-long show, there is a half-hour break. From among the 250 people attending, a Lucky Ten are chosen to meet with Alizée by two-way videoconference. Seven are chosen by lottery, and three by cash auction.

The Lucky Ten will each enjoy a three-minute chat with Alizée. During the prior half-hour break, they can elect to pay retail plus shipping for items from the Alizée store which Alizée will personalize during their session and ship to the theater for pickup in a week (or to any other designated address for a larger shipping fee.)

If any of the Lucky Ten sings or plays an instrument, they can also perform an Alizée song for up to one minute during the last minute of the three minutes they get with Alizée, who might just listen politely or elect to sing along, as the whole audience listens in. (Their instrument is otherwise sequestered, to prevent it from hiding a recording device, or being sounded. Such logistical issues may rule out the use of instruments.)

Other polite conversation is also welcome during any of the three-minute sessions, to which all present can listen. Some of the main show items might provide suggestive hooks, and a translator will help those unskilled in French. For people who are shy or run out of things to say, they can start or continue a touch-screen game (e.g. checkers) with Alizée until their time runs out.

Each personal three-minute session is recorded and posted online for a year at a location to which the participant alone is given the address and download instructions. He can pay extra to get a DVD recording of it shipped to him.

After the ten three-minute sessions, Alizée again addresses the audience as a whole, offering an extended goodbye. Perhaps she even sings a song stanza. The program ends with the showing of all of her music videos (seven?) to date, in the warm company of her devoted fans.

This is just a whimsical outline. Your thoughtful criticism and suggestions are encouraged!

[Marquis<3Alizée]

Anything for Alizée, and it's once in a life time. I'd beg the heck out of my parents to get it for me.

[Deepwaters]

LOL another weird idea, Doc.

If she's going to do a 90-minute show all by herself, it should be a concert. If she's going to host a "variety" show, it should have other acts as well as herself, not silly stuff like you described. (Not that I think she has any interest in hosting a variety show, but I could be wrong about that.) I wouldn't pay anything for this mess as you've described it.

[Tchaikovsky]

LOL another weird idea, Doc.

If she's going to do a 90-minute show all by herself, it should be a concert. If she's going to host a "variety" show, it should have other acts as well as herself, not silly stuff like you described. (Not that I think she has any interest in hosting a variety show, but I could be wrong about that.) I wouldn't pay anything for this mess as you've described it.

http://www.moenantikvariat.dk/Lidtforsp%C3%B8g/farts.jpg

LOL j/k

[Azhiri]

That's high entertainment, so I'd be willing to paaaaay... $75. If it were more than that, or too far away from me, I wouldn't go. :p

[AlizéeInspired]

This seems like it could be pretty sweet depending on how it would be conducted and what she would do. Plus it would just be awesome to interact with her like that. So, hypothetically, 100 dollars here :D. I think it would quite an experience.

[user472884]

I wouldn't want her to do any of these things. She has better things to do, family to hang out with.

[Deepwaters]

I wouldn't want her to do any of these things. She has better things to do, family to hang out with.

Well, the three songs are good. It's the rest of that stuff . . .

[jung_adore_ALIZEE]

What's wrong with a good ol' concert? Outside of her not having any that is.

Regards,

Jung

[ImRawdg]

Yeah, people should be wishing for concerts. I figured that would be what everyone is sitting pretty for...

[Människöpesten]

What's wrong with a good ol' concert? Outside of her not having any that is.

Regards,

Jung

^ nothing and i mean NOTHING beats a good live performance.

[Rev]

Nothing wrong with "An Evening With Alizée." It's just that the evening should be mostly music (after all, she is a singer). She could go almost anywhere with the rest of the time. Talk to the audience, tell a story or two, and maybe do a little acting along the way, or dance number, or something else witty.

She loves performing so much it's a pity a proper show hasn't been put together yet. :)

[User22]

Alizee doing card tricks and talking about how she likes some photos her dad did for her...


This would be amazing.
A concert would be more amazing...
Oh wait there are concerts coming....

[Jaimes]

Once in a lifetime indeed. I'll say 75$, 100$ if I could really be there and like poke her or get a cd thrown at me. something like that.

[User22]

Once in a lifetime indeed. I'll say 75$, 100$ if I could really be there and like poke her or get a cd thrown at me. something like that.

Man that cracked me up. Yes that's exactly how much I would pay if she would throw a Promo of Moi...Lolita at me, and have it hit my head.

[Cubeface]

I don't think I'd be able to go to anything like that if it was more then 50 dollars. It's possible, but pretty rare.

[sumi1]

I will starve for a month and sell my furniture to watch her in a concert but not a penny for this. It is nothing more than watching her videos/tv performances.

[FanDeAliFee]

By the way, I have nothing against big, fancy concerts filled end-to-end with music.

If you can aggregate a big crowd at each concert, and give a series of concerts, a lot of production effort, staffing and rehearsing can be done, and Alizée can star in a dynamite show whose grandeur is recorded (with improvements) for those of us who missed seeing it, courtesy of something like the En Concert video.

But what if you can't get even 2,500 people together at the same time in the biggest, richest French city in the world, even once, at the Grand Rex, and even after trying twice? Should you just give up and retire? Should you just make recordings while that business evaporates as a money-maker because of unlimited illicit copying?

Maybe you can work other things, like personal appearances at fairs (e.g. St. Erasmus Day in Ajaccio in June), program music at an elite hotel (e.g. The Paris Ritz in July) and so on.

The British music industry study I cited says that even if the recording business is vanishing, SOME people can still make money with music. If you can license Cyndi Lauper's True Colors to Kodak for their ads, you can make money. Even live shows are a growing money maker - the problem is that not every artist can put one together that pays very much.

In principle, you could record a show and share out the production cost by also selling to people who watch the edited recording, rather than the live show. That is how En Concert worked. But today, you face Napsterism, which is starting to injure video the way it long ago started injuring audio. "Deja vu all over again" as Yogi Berra would say, LOL.

A sequestered theater showing, where patrons cannot make (esp. high quality) recordings they pass on for free scotches Napsterism. Sadly, it is not as convenient as a disk or transmitted video-on-demand from Hulu or YouTube sent to your home PC or TV, but it can still sure beat the stuffing out of having to travel to another continent! And unlike in days gone by, global telecom is now so dirt cheap that the transmission cost of a live video feed - even a two-way connection - is negligible, even for small audiences like 250 people sitting in a small movie theater. And yes, it now can even include doing binocular-disparity "3D" so everyone virtually enjoys a front-row center view. (Aside: One of course still lacks the focal-depth cue one gets via holograms and in-person images.)

The bottom line is that artists who cannot put 2,500 concert viewers together in one place are no longer screwed! They might be able to put that number together at one time, 250 folks per city, by aggregating theaters in ten cities.

And even if they cannot put together even two cities at once, they might still play to an audience of 250 in a very distant city, without the need to travel from their home city, which eliminates costs, discomfort and lost time. And since you can make things interactive, even between continents, you can fashion the show for 250 so intimate that you might clear three or more times as much money per viewer as in a traditional concert venue.

I've made the point before that celebrities who have retired - like sports stars - can still make a pretty penny by hitting the convention and lecture circuit and never doing a lick of sports. To take an example from film, when he retired, Gregory Peck would go from place to place, reminisce about his career, comment upon some film clips he'd show, and then answer audience questions. He did no acting along the way, but he still drew crowds.

I think it is not impossible such folks can now use 3D theater venues to tour electronically. And even with only a decade in showbiz, I think someone like Alizée can start to do stuff like that, for which her appearance at the Ajaccio fair is supporting evidence.

Accepting her word, Alizée takes great pride in her singing and would never put in a bad singing performance, even for a small group. It might take a lot of practice to feel ready for a full-hour concert, and non-trivial psychic and physical stress in executing it. That's why I posited as few as three songs for the hypothetical 90 minute show for a meager 250 viewers, and made darn clear they could all be lip-synced, just like on typical TV shows. It guarantees no audio flubs and also facilitates cool stuff like multi-track singing and full orchestras for free. In my mind, if you want Alizée to sing for an entire hour, you'll have to aggregate 2,500 folks in one place or ten theaters of 250 folks. And by the way, then goodbye to (nearly?) all the one-on-one time; you'll just have to settle for interaction with the group as a whole.

I do not know exactly what material Alizée might use to fill the time outside her three (or more?) songs. My suggestions were inspired by stuff she has already done on TV shows like Stars à Domicile, Star Academy, La Méthode Cauet, Une Heure Avec and things in publicity interviews, chat show appearances and autograph sessions. Chatting and clowning around is a lot less demanding than doing that by which you want to be judged in all earnest. And for at least some fans, that stuff can have special meaning if it is in response to their requests and other participation.

Video games are getting so smart, Alizée might play 30 seconds of video-mediated virtual ping-pong rather than checkers with an audience member. She could play Simon Says with a group that spoke French. She could aim and launch real Nerf balls from an air cannon present in the theater as people try to dodge her shots. How much of a party animal she wanted to be would be up to her! Some people do stuff other than discuss their investment portfolio and foreign policy at parties.

And besides better average viewing, a 3D video feed offers an additional potential technical improvement over in-person attendance. One can do Augmented Reality by using a virtual set, if only via traditional green-screening, whose edge artifacts are no more today. That was never possible before, even in the most intimate nightclub act.

I sure hope Alizée would do something more exciting with it than give the Ajaccio weather report. But why can't she sing MJ with the MJ video playing behind her? She could do a duo with herself. Perhaps at one point she could even hold up her hand and shout stop, with the video screeching to a halt on a frozen frame. Then she asks, pointing with her finger, how many of you noticed the Tinker Bell statue next to the cake the first time you saw the video, and then takes a vote by applause. Then she says, ok, I thought so; now I will finish the song - unless instead you want to hear about the time my little dog Topaz got lost. And again there is an audience vote. People who never heard MJ before would get annoyed, but an audience of people who have seen the video 100 times before would be charmed, because they got to be a part of the show.

I have no idea about Alizée's interest in doing intimate shows like this, but they could command a very high gate price, because only the most devoted fans might attend. Alizée now has the Gainsbourg tribute in Tel Aviv later this month and then a booking to the northeast of Paris. And we also know she will be at the fair in Shanghai. I hope her new album helps her do many shows and win many new fans around the world who also visit her recording backlist with purchases, rather than piracy. But I would not be surprised to learn about increasing numbers of artists who might take commercial advantage of the new type of remote nightclub-style intimacy I posit in this thread.

[jung_adore_ALIZEE]

But what if you can't get even 2,500 people together at the same time in the biggest, richest French city in the world,

Then you do smaller venues.

Regards,

Jung

[ImRawdg]

Then you do smaller venues.

Regards,

Jung

Yes, that strategy worked for Yelle, correct? And in America, too.

I could see why Alizee wouldn't want to settle for a small venue, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

[jung_adore_ALIZEE]

Yes, that strategy worked for Yelle, correct? And in America, too.

I could see why Alizee wouldn't want to settle for a small venue, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

As a matter of fact it did work out just fine.

Regards,

Jung

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by docdtv:
But what if you can't get even 2,500 people together at the same time in the biggest, richest French city in the world...

Then you do smaller venues.

Indeed, that is just my point! What's new now is that sending a high-quality 3D video link, and even getting a video link back costs a pittance, even when paid for with a small venue audience. The small venue business need no longer be as painful. That's why I am polling people to see how much they'd pay.

And as far as Americans, say in the Bos-Wash corridor, are concerned, consider this. The cost in money and time of traveling round-trip to France or Israel or even just Monterey in Mexico might be so prohibitive that they would never attend a live Alizée event in any of those places. But maybe one could gather 250 of them at a theater in New York City, and entertaining them live could actually be made lucrative enough to Alizée, because she could do the show from her home town.

P.S. Don't ask ME why people like live shows. Just as I would rather read a published book than its first draft, I would rather watch the En Concert video than attend a live concert, in person or remotely, even cost and convenience aside. When compelled to offer my best rationales for the appeal of live concerts to others, here is what I come up with.
1. You get to share time (and maybe even body fluids) with other fans.
2. You get to "touch" the performers with your voice and placard, if not with your hand.
3. You get to see if the performers make mistakes (curiosity or Schadenfreude?)
4. You get to escape the "psychological shadow" of your usual dwellings and its denizens.
5. In the old days, video quality (noise, resolution) fell far short of a good theater seat. Some poor souls still haven't seen modern displays and far more are unwilling to pay for the improvement, which is why not everything mediated is shot at the technology frontier. (Note: As a student, I listened to all my music through a telephone speakerphone meant for a 3KHz bandwidth signal, rather than spend money on even a simple "decent" speaker.)

You will note the type of event I posit here is almost as much a meeting as a concert. (i.e. with a greatly enhanced rationale 2 noted above.) That adds a dimension to its appeal, potentially increasing the admission price people will pay, while reducing the professional demands on the performer.

[Människöpesten]

Then you do smaller venues.

Regards,

Jung

^. ^. ^. ^.
small venues are far better than large scale shows. closer to the artist.

[wasabi622]

Jesus Christ doc.. where do you come up with these things?? hahahaa!! If only.. :)

[FanDeAliFee]

Jesus Christ doc.. where do you come up with these things?? hahahaa!! If only.. :)

Since at least the 1936 Charlie Chaplain film Modern Times, the general public has looked to a future where, for good or ill, video-mediated telepresence would achieve what the half-millennium-old optical telescope never could. One day, the dreamers said, we would have enough channel capacity in our public telecom network to make videoconferencing more than just the one-time high-tech demo which Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover took part in way back in 1927.

When the semiconductor laser and low-loss optical fiber were developed in the late 20th century, it was no longer fanciful to say the day of enough cheap trunk bandwidth would surely come. The mass deployment of cable TV made the simplicity of a last-mile wired connection obvious. And then exploding microprocessor power offered the frosting of all but free real-time data compression as well.

Just as we were waiting for the videoconferencing explosion to hit, a funny thing happened. The cost of storing digital information plummeted precipitously, seemingly without end. It now made sense for a lot (albeit not all) of the stuff we had once thought would be the subject of live, interactive video telecom to instead be stored for replay on demand - either over wires (e.g. YouTube) or even from highly compact local storage media (e.g. video iPods). The 1993 You Will TV ad by AT&T, in which a kid looks at the live video feed of a remote robot flipping physical book pages never came to pass, because it became dirt cheap to snap and store digital page images in advance instead, in the manner of Google Books (http://books.google.com/).

<center><big>AT&T TV ads about the future from 1993-1994</big><br><object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5MnQ8EkwXJ0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0&amp;border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5MnQ8EkwXJ0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0&amp;border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></center>
Videoconferencing and some other aspects of telepresence continue to expand, but they are doing so in a surprisingly paced manner, in marked contrast to the very explosive video-on-demand surprise. But serious people, like Ray Kurzweil, below, still look to a time, within a decade, when telepresence (much facilitated by virtual reality) becomes a routine part of everyone's life.<center><object id='cspan-video-player' classid='clsid:d27cdb6eae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000' codebase='http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0' align='middle' height='500' width='410'><param name='allowScriptAccess' value='true'/><param name='movie' value='http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?pid=194500-1&start=6692&end=7283'/><param name='quality' value='high'/><param name='bgcolor' value='#ffffff'/><param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'/><param name='flashvars' value='system=http://www.c-spanvideo.org/common/services/flashXml.php?programid=171739&style=full&start=6692&end=7283'/>
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In this context, it is hardly extraordinary to speculate on the type of entertainment modality explored in this thread, without regard to the specific artist. This is especially true as the economy-wrecking potential of global energy price spikes provides a powerful new spur to having communications substitute for the transportation of persons whenever effective.