Disney The Little Mermaid In Concert Live to Film

[merprincess]

I'm going to this THIS SATURDAY 11/25/17 AT 2PM! This is in the Disney Concerts series that I believe is touring through orchestras across the nation. I'm seeing it at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis with the Minnesota Orchestra, as conducted by Sarah Hicks. I've been to similar events, but basically what will happen is that you will watch the film in the concert hall with only the voice acting, singing, and effects noises kept, but the full musical score is removed from the film and instead will be played live by the orchestra. So I'll basically be watching the film on a very large screen and hearing Jodi + co circa 1989 plus a live orchestra right in front of me, and I couldn't be more thrilled! Previously, I've seen MN Orchestra do this sort of event with The Wizard of Oz and West Side Story to great success. The score of TLM is so near and dear to my heart, I don't know precisely how I will react to hearing it with a full live orchestra, I may cry, I'm welling up right now typing this! (yeah, I know, I'm a sap!)

Relevant Links:
Link to buy tickets, if you're also in the MN area!
Program Notes from the event
Link to Disney Concerts
^this link will show you what other Disney Concerts exist and are available for concert venues to purchase in arrangement with Disney Concerts so that if they want to play this music in this arrangement, everything is taken care of. They have one for most of their hit films, and some medleys too, and they also have individual orchestral/choral arrangements of songs from nearly every film of theirs available to buy or rent, which is awesome!

I don't know if filming is allowed, I guess I'll find out when I get there, but I'd love to be able to film a small portion and share on here with you all! Generally it's just not common or really socially acceptable to whip out your phone to film orchestral performances, however when I saw Idina Menzel at Orchestra Hall many years ago, I was filming with my (now very old) flip cam and back then for that performance it was encouraged!

[veu]

A great event!

[merprincess]

It was SUCH a blast! The beginning started with the orchestra as led by the conductor, who cued the projector screen to start the film. Before the film, the orchestra actually played the When You Wish Upon a Star music that goes along with the newer Disney castle intro (the CGI one with the fireworks, you know the one). Then they started the film as normal, with the orchestra playing the music as the film played on the screen above.

A couple things I wanted to share:
- It was almost exactly the same score as the original music score for the film! Only a few minor differences, but at many points it was identical to watching the film, but with the joy of a live orchestral experience right before your eyes and ears. Breathtaking!
- They did a really good job staying synced to the movie (which was just the visual film with voices and sound effects, as all music was played live), there was only maybe one moment during Poor Unfortunate Souls where they got off by just a tiny hair, but got right back on tempo flawlessly. It is extremely difficult to conduct and play to cues already established in an external source like a film!
- There were no steel drums, so Under the Sea sounded a bit different with marimbas and a drum set (but still cool!)
- Some of the background chorus was eliminated (like in the Main Titles and Fireworks, but they were included in the Happy Ending Finale) because I think originally the chorus and orchestra recorded on the same track so I think it would've been difficult to isolate the chorus vocals and let the live orchestra play without including the recorded orchestra with the recorded chorus.
- One of my favorite bits was during Sebastian's fanfare after Triton's fanfare, the entire horn section were playing kazoos!
- The concertmaster (1st violinist) did a little bit of neat improv fiddling during The Jig!
- There was an intermission! I wasn't expecting one so it caught me off guard! The film was split into two with an intermission right after the transformation following Poor Unfortunate Souls where Ariel surfaces the water and flips her hair and makes her way to the shore. The orchestra played a little tag of Part of Your World before intermission.
- Upon returning from intermission, there was a brief entr'acte that, if I remember correctly, consisted mainly of Under the Sea (I'll need to see if it ever was uploaded anywhere, it was a nice arrangement!)
- The film resumed and went on with the orchestra all the way to the end, and then at the credits TO MY DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE they played the overture to the Broadway musical of The Little Mermaid! They also played some different arrangements of Under the Sea, Poor Unfortunate Souls, and Part of Your World, but my gosh was it a treat to hear that beautiful overture!
- I teared up maybe three or four times 😂 all because of hearing that gorgeous music live in person. These moments included the Disney intro, the Main Titles, and the credits where the Broadway overture was played.
- The audience clapped a few different times, since this is all basically "played through" because there's no breaks and the orchestra has to be timed exactly to the film, there aren't many spots where we were able to find a place to clap. Claps happened as the orchestra and conductor arrived (as per usual), after the Disney intro, after Under the Sea, right before and after intermission (again, as per usual), after Les Poissons/the Can-Can chase scene (which I found pretty amusing! The audience laughed the most at the chase scene with the Can Can music, I find that exciting since it's technically music from the opera Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach, which I have a role in next semester at my music school!), after Ursula was defeated, after Happy Ending, and a big applause at the very end after the credits.
- The audience was mostly families since it was a matinee (the next day, a Sunday, they had another show at the same time), so there were lots of little kids in costumes. I was alone but I Disneybounded wearing the Hot Topic casual version of Ariel's Kiss the Girl dress along with my Ursula nautilus shell necklace pendant and a blue hair bow. Lots of people said they liked my cosplay! The funniest/cutest thing to happen was when I was leaving the venue, there was a mom and her two young kids trailing behind me on our way to the parking ramp, and the mom sees me and turns to her kids and says "Look, it's Ariel! Shhh! Let's pretend we didn't see her!" and then I went along with it, even though I have brown hair and wasn't in a full costume or anything it was really sweet of them to think I could pass as Ariel, and I sang to them Ariel's ahhhh vocalise and they just about dropped their jaws! The mom told me her kids would definitely want my autograph! I asked the kids if they liked the movie (their mom was like "She's talking to you!! Oh my gosh!") and told them to have a fin-tastic rest of their day! That was a really sweet moment ☺️
- One really cool thing before the show that the venue did was this whole learning station area where the kids could go around and learn about Andersen's original story The Little Mermaid and how Disney adapted it, they got to make and take home a shell necklace with a mock pearl inside (since in the original story, her voice became a pearl placed inside a shell) as a reminder that Ariel traded her voice for life as a human, they also got to make paper fishes to put on a big mural of undersea creatures that make up Ariel's ocean friends, they also did this sort of I Spy activity with Ariel's hidden treasures identifying the different thingamabobs she has that were in a little box, then they got to meet some orchestra members and learn a bit about music and how an orchestra works together to collaborate on the music (and with the help of the musicians, they were able to try out a violin and cello). It was the CUTEST!

I couldn't film any of it or take pictures during the performance, but I have a few pictures here of what the stage looked like and what I wore:

[buckmana]

Where they playing the movie on that screen?
If so, I wonder what version of the audio track they were using.
I suspect it would have to be one specially made with the music tracks taken out so they can play their own version as accompaniment.
If that is true, then it would mean what they were playing was basically just the characters singing without musical support.

I am curious, do they play the background music as well?
Like a dramatic rise when something big is about to happen, but there is no actual song playing.

Hahaha, even without your wig, they still recognise you as Ariel!
I wonder what the reaction would have been if you showed up wearing it.

Another random musing, do some fans show up in cosplay as well?
I assume if you had to travel long distance in the costume, (like train rides or other forms of public transport), you'd need to have something fairly easy to move around in.

I do sometimes wonder how much that would make you stand out though, if people would notice or not.
I always remember with a smile the story about someone who went to order coffee at Starbuck's dressed as a comic book supervillian and despite the outrageousness of the costume, nobody reacted.

[merprincess]

Nov 30, 2017 2:14:30 GMT -5 buckmana said:

Where they playing the movie on that screen?
If so, I wonder what version of the audio track they were using.
I suspect it would have to be one specially made with the music tracks taken out so they can play their own version as accompaniment.
If that is true, then it would mean what they were playing was basically just the characters singing without musical support.

I am curious, do they play the background music as well?
Like a dramatic rise when something big is about to happen, but there is no actual song playing.

Hahaha, even without your wig, they still recognise you as Ariel!
I wonder what the reaction would have been if you showed up wearing it.

Another random musing, do some fans show up in cosplay as well?
I assume if you had to travel long distance in the costume, (like train rides or other forms of public transport), you'd need to have something fairly easy to move around in.

I do sometimes wonder how much that would make you stand out though, if people would notice or not.
I always remember with a smile the story about someone who went to order coffee at Starbuck's dressed as a comic book supervillian and despite the outrageousness of the costume, nobody reacted.

Yup, the film was played on the screen above as the conductor would simultaneously watch the screen to give cues and conduct the live orchestra in sync to the film (they've rehearsed it a lot and know what the cues are like and the conductor knows how many beats to give each cue, so it's not like she was scrambling to figure any of that out, but still must be difficult!).
The version of the audio track used included spoken dialogue, sung vocals, and sound effects. Some chorus vocals were on the track, like in the Happy Ending, and some weren't (like the chorus of "ah"s in the Main Titles and Fireworks tracks). But there was absolutely no music on this track they used, so that the orchestra could play it all live in time to the movie. Since the whole film isn't comprised of vocal songs with orchestra in the background (though there's a good amount of that), most of the music they played was the underscoring, which would be background music during spoken dialogue scenes and the music during animated scenes without dialogue. My favorite selection from the score would be the Bedtime track, as I often listen to it before bed and it was just beautiful to hear it with such a rich sounding orchestra right before my eyes and ears.
I didn't see anyone else in cosplay, I'm sure some people were Disneybounding but I didn't get a good look at everyone there. To be honest, it was mostly young children and families, not much of the Generation Z or millennial demographic compared to young children and their parents/grandparents. A lot of little girls had Ariel costumes, a little girl who sat next to me with her grandpa actually had a cute little blanket in the shape of a mermaid tail. The kids who went to the education event before the concert all had their little shell and pearl necklaces that they made as part of one of the many activities they got to take part in. The people who were closer to my age either dressed casually, as it was a matinée and not an evening concert, and I did see a fairly good amount of people my age (for context, my generation is late Gen Z/early millennial) and into the late millennial to Gen X wearing themed apparel and merch like TLM t-shirts, sweatshirts, bags, jewelry, etc. Stuff you'd find either at the Disney Store throughout the years and Hot Topic too (like my dress I had on). My dress wasn't a full costume though, and I drove myself so that wasn't an issue, and like I said the only people wearing costumes were the little kids dressed in the Disney Store Ariel dresses meant for children. I know for the Hollywood Bowl concert of The Little Mermaid Live last summer there was actually a cosplay contest, and lots of people from all generations showed up in costumes.
My favorite would have to be this AMAZING Vanessa cosplay from TLM Live Hollywood Bowl in summer of 2016 (I'm still so heartbroken I didn't have the money or means to go!):


(Vanessa cosplay by Iolani Martin Sanchez, pictured with Eric under her spell, played by Leo Camacho)

Wearing costumes in public is always a bit interesting, especially when it's not at a time when it would be socially acceptable to go out in public with a costume (Halloween, conventions, costume parties). I'm always driving to gigs myself in full costume for Princess Parties and on the road, people do stop and stare. Especially when stuck in traffic or if the birthday party I'm performing at is both in a big city and in a town where not much happens (in the big city, a poofy ballgown stand out among people dressed to go to desk jobs, and in the smaller suburbs and rural areas, you just don't expect a princess to be there at all). I can talk about that more in my Princess Party thread, but I have a lot of stories about different encounters I've had with strangers while either on route to a party or coming back from one, and also what transportation is like in those outfits.

[des]

Hey, I went to see this show in LA in 2016. I would love to go again.

[merprincess]

^des SO LUCKY! It looked amazing, I so wish I could've been there!!

[solarlunarxiii]

Omg that Vanessa cosplay had me on the floor laughing haha. And I love Leo Camacho! He's dating Sarah Snitch, a YouTuber I really like. What a cool event!