Tech: How To Get A Dead Rapper For Your Next Concert

April 16, 2012 by Dave Haynes

There’s lot of buzz today in tech blogs about the virtual appearance of long-dead rapper Tupac Shakur at the Coachella music festival in California this weekend.

Most of the buzz is about the ethics of having a dead guy perform at a live show (at least he wouldn’t have had a ridiculous dressing room rider in his contract, like $1,000 champagne or a pink armadillo). But there’s also chatter about the “How’d they do that???” aspect of the show.

The latter is pretty easy and has been done for many years, even pre-dating display tech. It’s just transparent foil showing a reflected image from a projector. There would have been more work editing and editing out the video of the potty-mouthed Shakur. In this case, the projection tech is from the UK firm Musion, which has done concerts and fashion shows in the past.

This video explains how it is done.

[vimeo id=”7047856″ width=”600″ height=”350″]

Photo from Rap-up