Preview: Jackson’s This Is It Movie

this is it preview

Nobody except the people in the rehearsals have any idea of the stagecraft that was being put together by Michael Jackson for his London shows.

The O2 gigs were to be a total theatrical experience and the extraordinary shows planned for the key songs come across in the film, ‘This Is It’, released October 28th.

The set list was a mix of full performances featuring 11 of his classics: Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, Beat It, Billie Jean, Man In The Mirror, We Are The World, Black Or White, Heal The World, Dirty Diana, Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, along with snippets from other hits such as Smooth Criminal and a Jackson Five tribute medley.

Thriller was to be staged with dozens of gigantic spiders and 20ft puppets. The lights were going to be dimmed and a giant screen come on. Everyone at the gig would have been given 3-D glasses, which they would have been told to put on at the start of the song.

As the famous opening bars rang around the arena monsters would have come up out of the ground – in 3-D. Jackson’s manager Frank DiLeo describes the scene: ‘It’s amazing. The monsters are incredible and when you have the glasses on they come straight at you. It’s terrifying!’

After the first shot of the monsters, Jackson and his dancers start to perform. The audience would have seen the monsters on the stage performing alongside the star and his crew.

Although the film does not include any 3-D snippets, cinema-goers will get a tantalising view of the spectacle.

The opening song in the concert was to be 1982′s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. A glass sphere would light up on stage and then slowly drift over the heads of the crowd. As it grew brighter, it would light up in a series of primary colours before returning to the stage where a shadowy figure would emerge from a hidden platform moving up through the stage: Jackson. The globe would land in Jackson’s hand and the singer would launch into the opening line of the song.

For Dirty Diana, Jackson planned to have a flaming bed with pole-dancing aerial gymnasts playing the part of the flickering flames. In an elaborately plotted routine, Jackson would be chased around the bed by a scantily dressed ‘fire goddess’ who, each time she touched the stage, would send flames shooting towards the rafters.

After she’d caught him mid song, she would tie him to the bedposts with gold ropes as a sheet of red descended to cover his struggling figure. At the end, the sheet would be whisked away – to reveal the goddess as the struggling figure, not Jackson.

Posted on October 19, 2009 | Filed Under Music