In Saturday's edition of the Telegraph newspaper, the new film production of Les Miserables is making a whole load of big claims. One of them is that for the first time ever, the actors are actually singing live on set rather than miming along to backing tracks. They claim "In what is being hailed as a first for movie musicals, actors including Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Eddie Redmayne hit the notes while a pianist off-camera plays the melodies to them via earpieces."
Well lads have we got news for you. Alan Parker did this years ago in The Commitments. And the reason that we know this is because our current MD Julian Douglas actually worked on that production. Parker felt that lead actor Andrew Strong, who played 'Deco', had such presence that the only way he could get genuine performances was to record all his vocals live on set. So every song you see on The Commitments is actually sung live, including those of the backing vocalists of which Maria Doyle Kennedy was one. Douglas said yesterday, "In 1991 it was actually far more difficult to record live on set than it is today. We had to move around 24 track tape machines that resemble a small bank vaults in weight and size! Synchronising the tape machines to the cameras was no easy feat either. Today for the Les Miserables I'd say they're using small computers which makes everything a lot handier and more portable."
So Mr. Tom Hooper director of the new film, take that you miserable rascal!