i dremt i dremt (T-ara compared to cats)

[koganbot]

I dremt there are Websites devoted to pictures of cats who look like members of T-ara.* Maybe even an animated TV show where T-ara (and all other people) are cats. I'm donating items to Goodwill, and I see, in a bag next to mine, decorative eggs that are painted as T-ara cats. As my friend Mary is driving me back, I proudly tell her, "This is where I got the idea." I'm chosen to direct the movie. It is originally to be lighthearted, but I say to myself, "I'm gonna do this right." In the movie, things are going well in Catworld, T-ara performing, sometimes as a band, playing all the instruments themselves. Then an evil sorceress transforms them into new creatures: human beings. There are worries that I'm going overbudget. We run a saturation ad campaign, in the U.S. as well as Korea, playing one clip over and over:

Jiyeon: When I move my arms, they seem as if they're not my arms but someone else's. When I move my legs, they seem as if they're not my legs but someone else's.

Psychiatrist: How long have you felt this way?

Jiyeon: Always.

Strangely, this dream makes almost no reference to the recent controversy, though there is the flicker of a thought that we have to mention it in the movie: I make the quick decision to write it briefly into an early cat scene, but not as a major event.

*This idea is not far-fetched, though when I do a Google image search for "cats that look like T-ara," I only get T-ara looking like cats. Now that I think of it, the mv for the Japanese version of "Bo Peep Bo Peep" has them as cats and (briefly) cats as them:

And T-ara have endorsed the Tony Moly Cats Wink Crazy Tint Stick (cat-shaped lip balm sticks, "hybrid lip product that's lip balm and tint that changes to a color that best suits your skin tone").

Comments

[koganbot]

My use of the word "live" was problematic. But what I mean regarding T-ara in the current situation is: "facing an audience where there's the possibility of an adverse reaction," disregarding whether the performance is sung or lipsynched and whether the whole thing (audience as well as performers) is pre-taped or at the same time as the broadcast.

It seems likely, from what I've seen and surmised, that different shows do it differently, and might well also vary it from act to act and circumstance to circumstance. As far as singing goes, I assume that for ballad singers and duets, the singing isn't lipsynched (but that doesn't mean the clip isn't sometimes recorded in advance, perhaps with multiple takes and with parts of different takes strung together). Whereas for idol groups, esp. when there's lots of dancing, the standard is that all of the backup vocals are prerecorded, but some or most of the lead parts are sung onstage (whether the "stage" is at the same time of the broadcast or not), though I'd guess (emphasize guess) that for at least some of these the sound mixer is mixing in prerecorded leads with the sung leads. And I guess you're suggesting a third possibility: that the performance is done as before (some sung leads but prerecorded background) but then the whole thing is taped and then performed again, entirely lipsynched, but including the rawness and wavers and breathlessness, if any, of the previously sung version.

(On comeback stages there are intro parts that are entirely prerecorded.)

As for the presence of an audience at the performance, I can imagine a bunch more possibilities: performance done entirely without an audience (possibly w/ multiple takes and costume changes and intersplicing), then the clip is broadcast live, but you don't even hear anything of the live audience during the clip, only at the beginning and the end; prerecorded as before, except when the clip is played back you do hear fan chants, screams, applause during the track; prerecorded in front of an audience (maybe carefully preselected or maybe not) with multiple takes and costume changes if necessary, and it's that prerecorded audience you hear live; prerecorded as before but with original audience sounds left out and replaced by the audience sounds during broadcast; prerecorded in front of an audience but in a single take; performed live in front of the broadcast audience.

When you combine all these you get a potentially large number of permutations. I gather that Music Core and Music Bank do things differently, though obviously I haven't researched this. Wikip is little help: says that all four of the main performance shows are "broadcast live," whatever that means. For M! Countdown it says, "The show features some of the latest and most popular artists who perform live on stage." Whatever that means.

But to reiterate: what I think is crucial here is that T-ara perform before a potentially unpredictable audience, which they certainly can do (and have done) in the past. Certainly some of the shows allow this.

Why do I think this is crucial?

That might be part of another post. But someone's got to take some risk sometime. They can't continue on with a whole bunch of industries running scared. Or they can continue on like this, but why would they want to?

UPDATE: T-ara faced a live audience yesterday (says Naver as translated by allkpop), at the 2012 World Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources concert in Jejudo Islands, along with BoA, SHINee, 2AM, Wooyoung, ZE:A, EXO-K, Nine Muses, and A Pink. So I needn't be so pessimistic. Don't know what the reaction was overall (story was typically sparse); there was this:

"However, during T-ara's performance some fans retaliated by turning their glow-stick off which was followed by a silent protest."