Take That Commemorate Their Record Breaking Eight Night Run At London's Wembley Stadium With A 360 Photo Of The 85,000 Strong Crowd
Take That brought the UK leg of their record-breaking Progress Live 2011 Tour Presented by Samsung, to a roaring finale to a sell-out crowd at London’s Wembley Stadium on Saturday 9th July. After eight spectacular concert nights at the UK’s national stadium, Take That have smashed the previous record of seven nights held by Michael Jackson for his 1988 Bad tour.
To mark this historic occasion, a 360-degree panoramic photo was taken at the last of the band’s Wembley shows that captures the entire Wembley crowd. This truly unique photo has been commissioned by Wembley Stadium, Take That and The Sun to say thank you to their fans for their unprecedented support and to celebrate the band’s record breaking Wembley shows.
Take That said: “Performing at Wembley Stadium is really special, there is no other place quite like it. The audiences have been absolutely incredible and we wanted to thank everyone who’s come to see us for all their support. We hope everyone will enjoy reliving the show and sharing their memories from our last night at Wembley with all their friends.”
Progress Live 2011 Presented by Samsung is biggest tour in UK and Irish history with over 1.76 million people having seen the show over the summer. The tour, one of the most highly anticipated music events of the summer, is the first time the band have toured as a five-piece since 1995. Audiences around the UK have been wowed by a spectacular two and a half hour set, which celebrates their biggest hits from the last two decades.
When Progress Live 2011 went on sale in October, a record breaking 1.34 million tickets were snapped up in less than 24 hours. The band smashed their previous box office record set in 2008 with The Circus Live Tour selling a total of 1.76 million tickets overall, more than doubling their own record for sales in a single day. 850,000 tickets went on sale at 9am on October 29, 2010 and throughout the day the band added a further 11 dates to cope with demand.
Take That’s new album ‘Progressed’, a double disc album featuring eight brand new songs, went straight in at No.1 when it was released on June 13th. The new tracks are part of a package alongside the band’s record-breaking album ‘Progress’ which will be on a separate disc of this two CD set.
Between them, Take That and Robbie Williams have sold over 80 million albums, had 14 number one albums, 18 number one singles, played to over 14.5 million people live, won 20 BRIT Awards, eight MTV awards and five Ivor Novello awards; and the list goes on. The band’s critically acclaimed 2010 album, ‘Progress’, has now sold in excess of two million copies.
Melvin Benn Chairman of Wembley Stadium: “This has been a truly remarkable tour and the band’s Wembley shows have been nothing short of spectacular. I hope the 360 photo will give fans a very special memento of the band’s record breaking Wembley shows. “It’s been an incredible summer of events here at Wembley Stadium and we are very proud to have written a new chapter in the stadium’s hall of fame.”
The 20-gigapixel panoramic 360-degree photo is being hosted at www.wembleystadium.com/wembley360 from midday on Monday 11 July.
Fans are invited to spot themselves in the crowd, share the photo with friends and tag themselves via Facebook.
The photo was captured by renowned photographer Jeffrey Martin from 360Cities.net and is also available to view at http://www.takethat.com; http://www.robbiewilliams.com; and http://www.thesun.co.uk
How the Take That at Wembley 360 works
The shoot itself is done with a professional grade digital SLR camera and long lens mounted on a robotic tripod head which turns, focuses and snaps photos in a continuous motion around 360-degrees until the entire inside space of the stadium has been captured.
Upwards of 1000 individual photographs are then sorted, merged and enhanced using 360Cities.net’s automated stitching technology to produce a finished image that would otherwise take days or weeks to create. A turbo-charged computer with more cores and gigabytes of RAM than you knew could be levered into a computer make it possible for the Progress Live Tour gigapixel panorama to be available online the following day, ready for people to view and tag via their Facebook accounts.