Queen flash-mob innovator reveals big sequel

The man behind a recent viral video of musicians playing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to stunned bystanders in a Paris square has revealed to AFP the meticulous work that went into his latest, even bigger production.

Queen’s flash mob video has been viewed nearly 600 million times since it was posted online in early September. Backing singers appear in the windows around the Place de la Contrescarpe, a child prodigy performs the famous guitar solo and organizer Julien Cohen leads the 30-strong troupe on a grand piano.

The 32-year-old Frenchman, who was already known as an online content creator, was the mastermind behind the idea and footed the €50,000 bill himself. “I didn’t expect such success, but of course if I did and invested so much in it, it’s because I believed in it,” he told AFP.

His latest project is even bigger, with 100 classical musicians performing five different songs, including Imagine Dragons’ “Believer,” on a central Paris boulevard. It cost €300,000 and the first video — of the Christmas carol “Carol of the Bells” — has already been viewed more than nine million times on social media platforms since it was posted on Monday.

“It might seem like a race to get bigger and bigger, but I really like doing ambitious things,” said the Cambridge University graduate, a fan of the world’s most popular YouTuber MrBeast. YouTube’s biggest content creators, like MrBeast, are moving into more expensive productions that resemble the kind of big-budget productions previously reserved for broadcasters.

Fellow American creators such as Dhar Mann or Alan Chikin Chow also created their own media companies with studios to produce content and series, further blurring the line between traditional television and the online world.

AFP witnessed the filming of Cohen’s latest Christmas-themed video earlier this month, revealing how he produces the perfectly coordinated choreography and captures the amazement on the faces of onlookers. He had 50 camera operators working to film the performers as well as the crowd reaction, while some of the music was pre-recorded. In total, there were three takes on each song, with the editors then selecting the best takes from the material for the final cut. “It has to be top quality,” Cohen explained, saying the goal was to entertain without making viewers think about the “huge amount of work” that went into its creation.