‘It’s like they’re there’: U2, Sphere break new ground with movie

When talking about “V-U2,” the filmed version of U2’s acclaimed residency at the Sphere that’s now a Sphere attraction itself, it’s tempting to borrow a song title from the band and say it’s even better than the real thing.

It isn’t. Not quite. But, boy, is it something to see.

“It looks like the live show, and it sounds like the live show. Just shorter and maybe more relaxed, but just as exciting,” says Morleigh Steinberg, who directed the project with her husband, U2 guitarist The Edge.

Rather than make a typical concert film with quick edits, cutaways to fans and other distractions, Steinberg and the band leaned into the Sphere’s technology to create something new.

“That was a really conscious decision to not make it like a documentary,” she says. “We wanted it to really feel like you were still there at the Sphere and you were watching them live.”

The finished product is so pristine, with a couple of drinks in you, you could swear that was the case.

‘Everyone was wowed’

“V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film,” as it’s formally known, has its roots in the music video for “Atomic City.” Most of that was filmed in downtown Las Vegas, but the video also incorporated imagery of the band inside the Sphere.

“The footage that they got from there was incredible,” Steinberg recalls. “I remember saying, ‘You guys have to film this show.’ ”

Sphere Studios’ Andrew Shulkind, who served as “V-U2’s” director of photography, says a couple of concerts early in the band’s 40-show run were recorded with traditional cameras as a test.

“And then when we saw the results and we shared it with the band and with (Sphere) leadership,” he says, “everyone was wowed.”

For the movie, Shulkind and the Sphere team filmed the band’s final three shows using five of the ultra-high-resolution Big Sky cameras that were introduced with “Postcard From Earth,” the Darren Aronofsky film that opened the Sphere and still plays several times each week.

“I think everybody was thrilled,” Steinberg says, “and kind of couldn’t believe it and just said, ‘It’s like they’re there. Let’s make this seem like a live experience.’”

They did — down to the merch stands selling T-shirts, hats and hoodies tied to the movie.

‘All the little nuances’

There’s something about the band as presented in “V-U2” that comes across as jarringly lifelike in ways not seen in other simulated concert experiences.

For most of its 82 minutes, “V-U2” relies on footage captured from the back of the general admission area on the floor and from a Sphere suite that’s as close to the exact center of the venue as you can get. Those vantage points put the band on the Sphere’s massive display plane, the world’s highest-resolution LED screen, mere feet from where it performed live.

Look closely and Bono, The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton seem fully rounded and three-dimensional. (Bram van den Berg, filling in for Larry Mullen Jr., is too hidden behind his drum kit to tell.) It’s a stark contrast to, say, the digital avatars of ABBA Voyage or that Whitney Houston hologram that had a show at Harrah’s Las Vegas.

Marco Brambilla’s visual art “King Size,” which accompanies “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and sees different eras of Elvis slide down the mammoth screen, is as disorienting as it was in the live show. But it’s easier to tear your eyes away from the recorded version of the band to soak up more of those visuals, including pieces of the movies “Casino,” “Showgirls,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Honeymoon in Vegas.”

It’s also easier to notice moments such as Bono channeling his devilish MacPhisto character by yawning and looking at his watch during one of The Edge’s soaring guitar solos.

“This screen is so sharp and it’s such a sort of truth machine that when you’re there, you see all the little nuances,” Shulkind says. “And something that was important to the band was to have these sort of little human moments — that you could see a glance that two people exchange, or a little moment or stumbling over a line. That was important for Bono to keep in because it wasn’t about this perfect idealized experience. It was about the exact moment that happened on that night and all the little things that make them human.”

‘Best I’ve ever heard them’

Steinberg has been married to The Edge since 2002, but her relationship with the band goes back to 1987, when she was featured as a dancer in the “With or Without You” music video. She’s been a creative consultant for U2 since 1993 and has taught Bono many of his onstage moves, including the ones atop the stage’s turntable that opened the Sphere shows.

“Morleigh has the worst job on this tour,” the singer joked when he brought her onstage at the Sphere for her birthday last October. “She has to tell me what to do. And I’m not very good at being told what to do.”

That relationship helped when it came to directing “V-U2” — to a point.

“He still surprises me,” Steinberg says. “There are some things I look at and I think are great, and he’ll go, ‘No. Absolutely not.’ ”

Steinberg has seen a lot of U2 shows over the years.

“It’s the best I’ve ever heard them,” she says of the Sphere concerts. “It wasn’t about volume. It was more about the nuance of the sound and respecting every instrument, every tone.”

Sphere Immersive Sound, powered by HOLOPLOT, uses technology known as 3D Audio Beamforming and Wave Field Synthesis — you don’t have to understand it to appreciate it — to deliver the same immaculate sound to every seat. That’s true for the movie as well.

When Bono asks the crowd “How are you?” and throws in a “How you doin’ up there?” for the folks in the cheap(er) seats, their filmed response sounds as though it’s coming from all around you. And the audience sing-along during “One” is the stuff from which goose bumps are made.

“Every time we saw it, even from the very early days when we first heard audio, it was hard not to clap at the end of a song. Even sitting there with the band,” Shulkind says. “I think that was the first time we thought, ‘This is something different.’”

At a recent showing, audience members weren’t entirely sure how to respond. Some applauded, others waved their hands in the air, and a few danced.

The experience feels like something more than a movie but not quite like a live show. It’s more akin to a ghost of the residency that lingered behind inside the Sphere long after U2 left the building. And none of it would have been possible without the venue’s groundbreaking tech.

“It seems irresponsible not to capture moments like this,” Shulkind says of the live U2 concerts. “Fortunately, we have the technology to do it in a really credible and accurate way.”