July 21, 2013
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The theatre and digital media departments of York University in Toronto, Canada, collaborated on a groundbreaking motion-capture and digital effects-enhanced stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in March 2013.
Director Alison Humphrey created this blog during the research and development phase to share links, ideas and inspiration with the show's extensive Dream team.
Please feel free to check out the left-hand column or the archives to track the early influences on this memorable project, or list below collecting all videos, photos and writeups of the production on a single page.
Enjoy!
Canadian sci-fi cable channel SPACE's flagship show, InnerSPACE, is a daily entertainment talk show that covers film, television, video games, technology, comic books, gadgets, and all things genre. SPACE producer Mark Askwith visited the York University campus a week before opening night, to preview the tech wizardry of A Midsummer Night's Dream:
InnerSPACE: "York University - Digital Dream"
[The above video is not embeddable, so you'll need to follow the link.]
Denise Enriquez of the Dream's digital media team put together this compendium of the many digital effects in the show:
Vanessa Shaver edited a short demo of the donkey head effect:
Another brief donkey head demo, this time from Dynamixyz:
Tiffany Kwan of the publicity team put together a rockin' trailer, as well as a behind-the-scenes feature:
The publicity team also created this Facebook page, where you can find rehearsal and crew photos:
Facebook: "Theatre at York: A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Amy Stewart of York's Faculty of Fine Arts Communications office, created these news articles...
Theatre and Digital Media “Dream” team conjures midsummer magic onstage (March 4, 2013)
...and this video, shot during our December tech-testing week in York's Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre:
Still Image Galleries:
Photographer John Jacques documented the show's first dress rehearsal on March 20, 2013.
John Lauener photographed the second dress on March 21st, 2013. (A few of these images are also on Flickr, including the full company photo.)
And Michelle Tracey's costume designs are up on Pinterest.
Huge thanks to all who helped to get the word out about this production!
July 20, 2013
Mr. & Mrs. Dream Have a Baby Holodeck
Cool Wired article on A Virtual Stage That Bends Reality and Pushes Theater’s Boundaries:
"French software engineering company [Dassault SystÈmes] typically uses its virtual reality technology to test, model and simulate products for companies like Boeing.... Dassault's Passion for Innovation program [is] an initiative whose goal is to apply the company’s industrial research and technology skills to the worlds of culture and education. Since 2005, Dassault has worked with architect Jean-Pierre Houdin to simulate the construction of Cheops pyramid, partnered with director Luc Besson to bring 3-D interactivity to movie theaters, and helped cartoon artists turn their cartoons into virtual reality (and these are just a few of their projects). Mr. & Mrs. Dream is Dassault’s first crack at live dance..."For this touring performance project, Dassault created "a mobile 'magic box,' which is basically a disassemble-able series of four gray screens and six projectors that would be the canvas for the immersive world of Mr. & Mrs. Dream. The box is similar to the virtual reality rooms traditionally used by industrial companies, only instead of testing emergency scenarios and modeling new airplane features, this box is used to motion-track dancers and project computer-generated images. For scenes like the one mentioned above, [Benoît] Marini positioned three Kinect sensors above the stage to track the dancers’ movements. So when the dancers jump, the meteorites bounce, or when the dancers kick, a flurry of leaves float through the air. Most of the other projected dance numbers were motion-captured in the studio and are played back in sync with the music...."
Hat tip to Mark Askwith!