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Using the sound visualizations of two tracks, one from Freddie Mercury and the other from Michael Bublé, Fil Henley shows us how to recognize the subtle auto-tuning that has applied to the vocals of some recordings (like Bublé’s in this instance). You can see quite easily that the precise hitting and holding of notes in the auto-tuned version is unnaturally superhuman. (via the morning news)
Ctrl Shift Face created the popular deepfake videos of Bill Hader impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hader doing Tom Cruise, and Jim Carrey in The Shining. For their latest video, they edited Freddie Mercury’s face onto Rami Malek1 acting in a scene from Mr. Robot:
And for the first time, they shared a short visual effects breakdown of how these deepfakes are made:
Mercury/Malek says in the scene: “Even I’m not crazy enough to believe that distortion of reality.” Ctrl Shift Face is making it difficult to believe these deepfakes aren’t real.
I had dinner next to Malek at the bar in a restaurant in the West Village a few months ago, pre-Oscar. I didn’t notice who it was when he sat down but as soon as he opened his mouth, I knew it was him — that unmistakable voice. Several people came by to say hello, buy him drinks, etc. and he and his friends were super gracious to everyone, staff included. I’ve added him to my list of actors who are actually nice alongside Tom Hanks and Keanu Reeves.↩
Whatever your opinion of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody,1 you gotta admit the music was pretty great. After all, Mercury and Queen were pretty great. But some of the credit also goes to Marc Martel, who sounds remarkably like Mercury and did some of the vocals for the film.
Rami Malek embodies Mercury onscreen, but as he told The New York Times last year, “No one wants to hear me sing.” During the performance sequences in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the movie sometimes employs Mercury’s actual vocals from the Queen archives, but that wasn’t always practical — some scenes demanded a stunt vocal-cord performer.
The film’s creators have conceded that the sung vocals in the movie are largely by Mercury and Martel, although they haven’t broken down the specifics of who contributed what; doing so might distract from Malek’s performance.
Here’s Martel singing We Are The Champions:
He even looks a little bit like Mercury, don’t you think? Perhaps more impressively, here’s Martel doing Bohemian Rhapsody:
Vocal coach Carl Franz was impressed.
Martel is currently touring with a Queen cover band and released an album of Queen covers last year.
Bonus: Polyphonic explains why Mercury was such an incredible singer:
(via open culture)
My 2 cents is that Rami Malik deserved the hell out of that Oscar and BH was really fun to see in the midst of a sea of Queen fans on opening night. But a Best Picture nominee it was not.↩
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