ABBA on TV

Facts:

The film ended up as a co-production between Polar Music International AB and Reg Grundy Productions Pty Ltd who were holders of the ABBA merchandising licence in Australia as well as famous TV production company.
Filming started as soon as ABBA arrived at Sydney airport on Sunday 27th February 1977. Every public occasion was filmed for possible use in the movie including the press conference at ABBA's Sydney hotel, the Sebel Town House (which was demolished in 2000 to make way for a new apartment block!); the Civic Reception at Melbourne Town Hall; fan meetings; photo calls and even travelling from venue to venue.
All of the ABBA concerts in Australia were recorded for the film's soundtrack, and potentially, a live album. The bulk of the live footage that you see in the final film was recorded at the Perth Entertainment Centre on 10th, 11th and 12th March 1977 as that was the only indoor venue and made for better acoustics on film - yet three different songs were filmed at each of the 11 concerts.
Robert Hughes (Ashley) was involved in the filming and interview of fans outside each venue and also the general public, like the open-air interviews conducted in Kings Park in Perth overlooking the city. He also spoke to the children (from Currembena Independent School in New South Wales) that you see throughout the film.
The opening shots of the film were an attempt to get the feel of Australia waking up in the morning to delicate sunshine by showing various animals. We see a horse, a donkey, a kangaroo, a wallaby and a cow. But I think it's a shame there is no koala bear footage (an indigenous Australian animal and to many the symbol of Australia! (All due respect to the kangaroo and the wallaby however!).
After the radio station manager says, "This is gonna be world-wide" and the screen subsequently goes into 'letter-box' format, the screen doesn't return to 'normal' until Ashley is racing to the press conference in his purple car under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The following songs were performed live by ABBA on their Australian tour but never made it into the movie: "That's Me"; "Sitting In The Palm Tree"; "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do"; "Dum Dum Diddle"; "Knowing Me, Knowing You"; "I am an A"; "Thank You For the Music" and "I Wonder (Departure)"
The spot in the Sydney Opera House forecourt where Ashley parks his car has been a No Parking zone since the Opera House first opened in 1973!
It's been explained that the reason for the terrible lip-synching at the press conference was because the journalists were not members of actor's equity, so the questions were voiced by actors.
On the original video of the film, the sound blip in "Tiger" was caused by an error in duplication.
In the scene on the plane when reading through all those magazines, many of the photos shown are from different magazines, especially the pre-ABBA pictures. (examples?)
Apparently Lasse Hallström wanted a distinctive looking car for Ashley, hence the pinky-purple colour, so when it came to filming the later scenes in Perth (which were passed off as being in Sydney), they had a very hard time finding another Ford Escort in the same colour. Robert Hughes recalls: "I remember there's a sequence with the purple car where they needed to shoot more traffic scenes, which were supposed to be in Sydney. But the close-ups were actually filmed in Perth, so they had to go around and find the same colour purple car to match and we mocked up a traffic jam."
The ticket tout was selling tickets for AUS$50 which today (September 2005) would be: £21 (UK) / $39 (US) / 290 SEK / 31 Euros.
Any five year old in the film would now (September 2005) be 33 years old!
The people seen wearing ABBA T-shirts and caps were all part of the film crew and the woman with long brown hair wearing an ABBA baseball cap was Shelley Bamford, a production assistant on the film.
At the finale of "Get On The Carousel" where the girls are posing with arms outstretched and the music gets higher with ever note - in the video, the sound is thrown from left to right on stereo systems (but sounds muffled on basic TV sets). In the actual concert, the sound was thrown from left to right then back to front - not easily achieved on video!
When ABBA are at the Melbourne Town Hall, you see a someone waving the single cover for "Knowing Me Knowing You" about as Ashley tries to push his way through the crowds. The single had been released in Australia just the previous week.
There was a bomb scare at one of the Perth concerts and the venue was evacuated for 20 minutes. Benny was on stage playing "Intermezzo No.1" as all of the backstage crew were being ushered to safety leaving him perplexed on stage when his solo had finished! The following concert was then delayed by 30 minutes.
A brand new lighting effect was used for "Eagle" which had never been seen on the big screen before, although it was originally intended for the movie "Superman". The 'flutter box' produced the effect of flickering coloured lights.
In reality, the running order of the mini-musical had "Get On The Carousel" as the final song (not "I'm a Marionette"). "Dancing Queen" was the final song of the whole concert, not "So Long". (Having said that, "So Long" was not performed at the first Sydney concert).
Robert Hughes is best known in Australia for his role as Martin Kelly in the sitcom 'Hey Dad', while Tom Oliver's most famous role is as Lou Carpenter in the soap opera 'Neighbours'.
It's been claimed that one of the early plans was to make a TV special and so one of the two Royal Albert Hall (London) concerts was filmed for that purpose before the idea snowballed into a full-blown motion picture once they hit Australia. It is suspected that at least one shot of one of the London concert's footage is featured in the finished movie - in particular at the end of the first "Thank You For the Music" where there is a distance shot of the stage ("without a song or a dance what are we") because the curtains are draped across the top of the stage rather than lying straight as they were in most of the Australian concerts.
Robert Hughes remembers: "Also, in Sydney, we filmed at a local department store that stocked all the cushions and merchandise - I think it was Grace Bros. in Chatswood. The film crew took a lot of merchandise from Australia back to Stockholm. The other merchandise sequence was shot in a Stockholm newsagent's using a lot of stuff from Australia."
Some of the merchandise you see Ashley flicking through and buying in the shop during "Intermezzo No.1" was never actually for sale in Australia.
On board the jet to Perth, you see Ashley flicking through the pages of a magazine learning about each ABBA member. The widescreen version shows two baby pictures of Björn when the normal version just shows one. Also, the normal version doesn't show Björn in the first picture of The Hootenanny Singers, only the other three band members! Björn's face is seen as part of the group in the widescreen version and on the big screen.
When Ashley is trying to buy a ticket to the "Perth" concert, European tour programmes can be seen on the ticket seller's counter. The Australian programme had a different front cover which you see being sold before the Adelaide concert.
After Ashley's arrival in "Perth", he's seen interviewing the public and they're all holding umbrellas or wearing raincoats which would have been filmed in Sydney (remember "you make us forget the rain!"). Yet the very next shot overlooking Perth city centre for "Interview No.5" has brilliant sunshine.
During "Mamma Mia" and the line "yes, I've been broken-hearted", you see Frida in a fuzzy shot in a camera angle not seen anywhere else in the film.
Amongst the merchandise Ashley snaps up for research is an ABBA scrapbook and an ABBA writing pad (both of which would have empty pages inside!). He also buys two copies of the 'Spunky! ABBA Picture Book'.
Apparently some of the items shown during "Money Money money" were not available in Australia, like the glass mugs and the banner they sit on (which were probably Swedish).
The taxi interiors at the end of the film were shot in Sweden while the exterior shots of the taxi driving along were actually filmed in Melbourne. As the car was a Swedish left-hand model, the film was reversed.
Tom Oliver went out with the film crew for a couple of hours filming his bit in the taxi with the crew in the back filming him and then Robert went out and was filmed from the front - so they were not actually in the car at the same time!
All of the clocks you see were all shot in Sweden, including the clock tower at the end of Hamngatan in Stockholm.
ABBA left Perth for London on Sunday 13th March 1977 but filming had not finished and some additional footage was filmed with the Australian actors, including the Moomba Festival in Melbourne. In truth, ABBA had already left Melbourne when the Moomba Festival took place and their appearance at the Melbourne Town Hall was an entirely separate event held on Saturday 5th March 1977. The Moomba Parade used to take place in the second weekend of March, would have been 12th and 13th March when ABBA were in Perth.
Robert Hughes recalls: "The sequence where I've overslept for an interview with ABBA was shot in two separate locations - one is in the hotel, maybe in Adelaide, and the second scene when I cross the room, look out of the window and see the Moomba Festival was shot from the window of the first floor of a bank in Melbourne."
The shots of Ashley peering up at the balcony surrounded by screaming fans were also shot after ABBA left Melbourne. They are very tight shots, but if you look closely, you can see vehicles in the background. Seeing the view from the balcony when ABBA were actually there, absolutely no traffic could get through as the road was blocked off entirely. Some ABBA fans who were there at the Town Hall were asked to come back some time later so they could be filmed, surrounding Robert Hughes, yelling and screaming for ABBA when they weren't even there!
Melbourne inhabitants would recognise the street we see in the film with the Festival parade because it is exactly the same street (Swanston Street) where the Town Hall is where all the fans were gathered outside.
The radio announcement you hear that "The Moomba Festival presents the last appearance of ABBA in Australia" is a phoney one dubbed in afterwards. What's so odd about this announcement is that, according to the plot of the film, ABBA had only just arrived in Melbourne and hadn't even played a concert. Yet in real life, the Town Hall reception was ABBA's FIRST appearance in Melbourne.
As well as the bodyguard, Tom Oliver also appeared as the drunken bartender, the butler in the dinner scene and the taxi driver at the end of the film.
Lucky Ashley got to kiss Frida four times in the dream sequence and Agnetha once although the Agnetha kiss is very much in the backround.
In one of the behind-the-scenes shots, when ABBA are seen in the hotel corridor and trying to get into their room surrounded by pushy film crews during "Get On The Carousel", note that there are clearly only two cameras shown (one of which is obviously a Panavision camera), yet footage is used in the film from BOTH cameras ie. both angles. The whole scuffle in the corridor must have therefore been staged for the film and the worried looks on ABBA's faces, especially Frida, were the results of some very convincing acting!
One of the film crews is heard to mention Channel 9, an Australian television network who at one stage were to film a concert for later screening on television (you hear someone say "We've go the rights to this film.").
At the of "Rock Me" (in the original video version) you see Björn and Agnetha on stage and hear Frida's voice saying "Thank you" which makes it look like Agnetha's saying the words. However, in the widescreen version you see Frida as well and can see that is is her speaking. Similarly at the end of "Fernando", you see Frida talking into the microphone yet it sounds like Agnetha saying "Thank you so much."
In May 1977, ABBA started recording 'The Album' intending to use some of the new songs in the final version of 'ABBA - The Movie'
'The Name of the Game' dream sequence was filmed in June 1977 on Djurgården, one of Stockholm's main islands and close to ABBA's homes at the time, with a crew of 15 including one bus and two trailers. Both Tom Oliver and Robert Hughes travelled across the world specifically for it. There's no surprise therefore why so many shots of Stockholm were passed off as Sydney or Melbourne in the final cut of the film.
Throughout July 1977, Lasse Hallström and his wife Malou whittled down the huge amount of filmed material (it's been claimed in excess of 50 hours) down to 90 minutes worth of movie together with Ulf Neidemar.
According to 'The Complete Recording Sessions' by Carl Magnus Palm, backing vocals by Lena Andersson, Lena-Maria Gårdenäs and Maritz Horn were added to the film soundtrack on 8th September 1977. From 12th-16th September, an unknown number of overdubs were recorded for the film soundtrack at Bohus Studio, Kungälv, by all of the group except for Agnetha who, in the middle stages of pregnancy, stayed in Stockholm. Overdubs were deemed necessary by Michael B Tretow who said in 'The Complete Recording Sessions', "The voices would disappear from the microphones because they couldn't possibly concentrate on singing when they were so busy putting on a show. They were jumping up and down and dancing and it was raining and whatnot, so it was hard to get a good sound." (As has been proved time and time again on bootleg cassettes and CDs, ABBA live sounded nothing like they sounded 'live' in "ABBA - The Movie" and it's all because of these overdubs.
The biggest disappointment on the film's soundtrack was probably the omission of "I am An A" - not only because we don't get to hear the song, but because don't get to see them singing the song, something that would have been an absolute delight to watch as they sang such witty lyrics whilst having a breather from the faster numbers.