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[airalihsa]

Bibliography

Squid Game (2021) Netflix, 17 Sept.

3% (2016) Netflix, 25 Nov.

Naughty Dog (2007) Uncharted (Edition Standard) PS3, PS4, PS5, PS VITA, [Computer game]. Sony Computer Entertainment.

BioWare (2009) Dragon Age (Edition Standard) Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC, [Computer game]. Electronic Arts.

Meadows, A. (2022) Maladaptive Daydreaming. Available at: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/mental-health/maladaptive-daydreaming (Accessed: 17 May 2022).

[airalihsa]

How do I feel about the overall outcome of my project?

If I’m being honest, I’m quite proud with the outcome of my project. I did struggle more with this audio play than the one I made in first year, but in the end, I think the outcome is a positive one.

I did get receive some positive feedback from some peers and audiences members, with one person commenting on how they could easily see this become a film or a tv show, and then proceeding to ask how I came up with the story.

I had another praising the project in an excited manner saying that it was really good, and that all it all blended well together.

Another person said that they thought that the sound effects were at a good volume and that the voices were clear to hear. The sounds weren’t too loud, and they matched the sound that you would expect the object to make. For example, the sound of a chair being pulled out.

All in all, I believe this project had a good outcome, and was well received.

[airalihsa]

What I have learned from this Experience.

I have learnt many things during this project. Here is a list of what I have learnt during this project.

I have learnt that I must give myself more time in order to be satisfied with what I’ve made.

I learnt that even though 10 minutes may feel like a long time, it actually isn’t and thus I should not be too ambitious with what I want to make.

I’ve learnt more about time management. For example, what days I should focus on the project, and when to have a break, and how long for.

I’ve been able to communicate better with those that helped with the project. (Communication is something I tend to struggle with).

I’ve learnt that its ok to feel somewhat unsatisfied with your own work, as long as other people are satisfied with it.

I’ve learnt that collaboration is very beneficial, and I shouldn’t do everything alone. I had someone in the role of voice director, and it was very beneficial to the voice recording session.

[airalihsa]

What would I do Differently if I had the chance?

If I had the chance to do something differently, then it would be getting more people involved in my project. For example, contacting music students and asking if anyone would want to write the music.

Another thing I would’ve done differently is giving myself more time. I feel like I rushed parts of the project, especially the script. I believe that if I had given myself more time, I would’ve been able to write a script that I could be prouder and more satisfied with. Even though many people have told me that the story is good, I feel I could’ve done even better with more time.

[airalihsa]

Problems I faced, and how I Solved them.

There were a few problems that I had. I mentioned these in the Process of Audio post, but I will go into more detail here and explain how I found a solution for them.

My first problem is something many people probably experience, and that is coming up with ideas. I won’t stay on this for too long as I’ve already written how I overcame this. My first problem was not being able to move forward with my original idea. I had a concept in my mind, but I couldn’t visualise it into a 10-minute audio play. I had to make the decision to start again. So, my solution was to take parts of the idea, and form it into a new idea that I could work with better.

My second problem was with the script. I had written a script, but I felt that the ending was rushed, and I wasn’t happy with it. I liked the first act, it flowed very well in my opinion, but the last act, which is meant to wrap everything up, just didn’t feel very satisfying to me. To find a solution to this, I met up with my advisor/tutor and had a discussion on how I could rectify this. At the end of the conversation, I came to the conclusion that I needed to remove the character known as Lillia. In the overall story, Lillia didn’t really add much to the story, I could even go as far and say she didn’t add anything to story other than a scene with lots of action. The scene where she was introduced ended up turning into act 2 and went on for around 5 minutes. It was about the main trio getting ambushed and attack by Lillia, Lillia fails in her attempt to kill the main trio and surrenders, to which she explains that she was hired by the antagonist (who appears in the last scene). The main trio ask her to help them instead and promise to pay her more than the antagonist was paying. I decided that this scene plus the character didn’t add to the main story, and thus I chose to remove this scene and re-write the final act, which then became act 2 instead of act 3.

My third problem was with the dialogue recordings. I decided that I didn’t want to use the universities recording studios. Mainly because I didn’t know how to use them, and I didn’t have much time to really learn, plus when I recorded my last audio play, I found a space that was quiet and worked as a good place to record. I ended up using the study booths in the library. I had many problems, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was with my microphones. They could capture really good quality, but they could also capture noises that we couldn’t hear such as people talking outside. At the time of recording none of us had noticed any background noise (we replayed every recording to see if it was done well or if anything needed to change), but once I imported all the audio into my editing software, I could hear it. Luckily, I found a solution with the ambience for the scenes. Somehow the ambience cancelled out any background noise from the dialogue.

Now, my other problem with the audio dialogue was that some of the cast spoke some lines very loudly. On the original recordings, it sounded fine, it just sounded like someone had raised their voice or was shouting, but my editing software didn’t seem to like that, and caused the higher sounds to crackle. This caused the quality of some of the dialogue to decrease. The solution I found was to import the audio into a video editing software, and decrease the volume there, then imported it back into the audio software. This solution made the raised voices and shouting sound more natural.

[airalihsa]

Maladaptive Daydreaming, and how it helped me create my Audio Play.

Now this may seem a bit off topic, but it does tie into how my thought process works, and how why I find it easier to make audio over film. I have a condition known as Maladaptive Daydreaming. This is an unofficial condition and isn’t officially recognised by medical practitioners thus many people self-diagnose themselves with this condition. It can also be linked to other mental conditions such as Autism, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, etc. The majority of Maladaptive Daydreamers also have a mental health disorder. Maladaptive Daydreaming is described as a condition where a person experiences daydreams that are intense and highly distracting (Meadows, 2022). Although they can be highly distracting, these people are still aware of their surrounding. The daydreams can range to having conversations with people you know, to fictional worlds with a story, characters, and plot-lines that you control. Now I know you’re wondering where this ties in. Well, this ties in to how I came up with my story and adds to why I find ambience and music important in audio plays.

Maladaptive Daydreamers are triggered by a number of things, which include music. This is why I made a playlist that had a number of music from fantasy video games and films/tv shows. When I listened to the playlist, I was able to see a story play out in front of me, a daydream. This is when I wrote everything down and created my base for the story.

Now I mentioned above how these daydreams can be triggered by music. Well, an audio play with lots of ambience and music can trigger the mind to see the story as if it were a film (at least for me that is). Now I’ve heard audio plays with not much ambience, and mainly sound effects, and for me it causes me to not be able to visualise them that well. It can also mean that certain sound effects may trigger daydreams that diverge my mind’s eye, and thus causing me to lose track on the story, for example, a sound effect that doesn’t fit the narrative could cause me to visualise something entirely different and then not follow the plot. Now this is obviously not that case for everyone, but it is the reason I like listening to and creating audio plays with a big atmosphere.

[airalihsa]

Design Choices

A lot of the design choices I made were in a manner of speaking personal ones, or choices that reflected my personality, or what I was currently experiencing in my life at the time.

I originally planned for it to sound a lot more medieval/Celtic, but the end product was more oriental. The reason for this is that I’m currently learning Japanese and because of this, I am very interested in the culture. I wanted parts of my piece to tie into what I currently am interested in. The oriental music was in a way not planned, but once I started testing out different background music to the scenes, I realised that I preferred the oriental music then classic fantasy. I felt that having fantasy background music would be make the audio play too similar to my first-year audio play, and I didn’t want it to sound exactly the same, otherwise it would feel as if I was just copying the same thing as I had done before.

I chose the soundtrack depending in the atmosphere of the scene or where the scene took place. For example, I chose oriental Japanese music that features an instrument called a Koto (the national instrument of Japan) for a scene that was set in a place called the Blossom Gardens. 

Since the word blossom usually indicates Sakura Trees (cherry blossom trees), which are from Japan, I wanted the soundtrack to reflect that.

All the music I sourced was either copyright free, or free to use in non-profit projects.

The pandemic was hard for all of us. At the beginning of the pandemic, my eldest cat passed away, he was with me since I was 4 years old.

When the time came to start planning my final project, I wanted to commemorate him in some way. Hence there is a cat in the audio play called Menno.

Here is an extract of the script with the line that commemorates him:

This is in the second scene where the cat is introduced. That cat doesn’t really contribute to the story, and hence is only referenced a few times, and meows only once. I only put it there as a way to commemorate my cat.

Now the meow was done my cat Monty (who is still with us).

He is a very talkative cat, especially when there is food around. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to record a cat meow. Unfortunately, he doesn’t meow like a normal cat, he more or less screams, but I believe his meow worked as a way to say “I’m here too”.

One thing in an audio I find quite important and integral to paint a clear picture in the mind’s eye is the presence of an ambience accompanied by scene appropriate music. I myself would never be able to picture something so clearly unless there was an ambience with music. Sound effects can go a long way, but in my opinion, without a clear ambience, it doesn’t have the same effect. This is why I had music in each scene, to help paint the picture.

Some people might argue with me saying that you need a background ambience and music to paint the picture, and they might say that well placed dialogue and sound effects can do just that, and I agree with that, but from my opinion, there’s just something thrilling about the atmosphere ambience and music can create.

[airalihsa]

Inspirations

I can’t talk about my piece if I don’t talk about what inspired me to make to make this piece. Now I play lots of video games, and lot of them are fantasy games. The biggest inspiration for my project was Dragon Age (2009). Especially the first game, in which the protagonist is betrayed and ends up on the run.

In my original script, I had a scene where the characters are ambushed by hired mercenary’s, this scene was heavily inspired by a segment of the first game where the protagonists get ambushed in the same way, both my scene and the scene in the game ends in a similar way, with the leader of the mercenary’s joining the protagonist.

My audio play from my first year also inspired me. It helped inspire me with direction and what to do. For example, there were many times where I had lost my way and wasn’t entirely sure what to do, but then I’d look back on my previous work and would be reminded on how to proceed forward.

[airalihsa]

The Process of my Audio Project

As mentioned in the previous post (Concept Ideas) I had two base ideas. The film idea was scrapped, or for better words archived so I could possibly use it for a future project if I wanted, and the fantasy audio was broken down. By broken down, I mean that I decided that I wanted to use parts of the idea and create a new idea, which eventually led to my final idea which was named Tale of Akari.

The actual process of creating this project was quite hectic for me. Mainly due to the fact that I struggle to focus on more than one project at a time, and with so many other projects that were due in much sooner, I just didn’t get the time.

When I realised that I needed to create a new idea, I struggled a little. I liked my idea, but I couldn’t see a way to move forward with it. What I did to help myself, is I sat down in a quiet space, put some headphones on, and started playing some genre specific music. When I did this, I just let my imagination run free, I wrote down everything, then it started to become a rough draft of a semi-developed story (not a script yet, but more of an outline). It originally started out as names for the characters, then into actual landscapes I could see in my mind, and then scenarios with these characters and landscapes.

Here is outcome of this little writing session I had…

After this, I ended up unfortunately taking a long break from the audio play but in early March, I started to write the script, find a cast for my characters, and then record my lines.

I did end up re-writing a part of my script to take out a character, that in all fairness didn’t really add to the plot and had a big chunk of the script introducing them. I did this because I felt that the ending wasn’t fleshed out enough and didn’t end very well. It felt a little too incomplete. I had few discussions with my adviser/tutor about this and we came to the conclusion to remove the character that wasn’t needed from the story. The character I took out was called Lillia, a mercenary who was hired to kill the protagonist Akari and her friends, but then eventually joins the group.

After I re-wrote my script and my advisor/tutor said that it reads well, I then proceeded to the recording part of my process. I first needed to cast my characters. The casting went well, as I had an idea of who I wanted for some characters, plus I had people come forward expressing their interest at having a part. I had all the characters cast, but I did have some problems with the part of the protagonist. The person who was meant to play the part told me 2 days prior to recording that they had to drop out, this was quite disappointing as they were quite keen on being cast as the protagonist. Luckily, I had someone who was able to take the role if no one else was available.

I recorded the majority of the script on the 17th of March 2022. It took roughly an hour and a half, and it went rather well. I wanted everyone who could possibly make it to record together. I’ve seen, and experienced other voice recording processes where they directors just asked for the voices to be sent in with no direction. I believe it is better to have a full cast recording so that people can easily bounce off each other and make it sound more natural.

After the dialogue was recorded, I took another break so that I could focus on a more immediate project, but as soon as that project was done, I went straight back to my audio play.

I decided to use GarageBand (2004) to put the audio play together. When I started to put all the dialogue together, I noticed that for some reason there was background noise on the audio pieces, that when listening with the cast, we hadn’t noticed. For some reason the programme I was using to put all the material together was making the background noise more audible. Luckily with background music, and ambience, the noise couldn’t be heard anymore.

I believe that putting everything together was the most difficult part of the process. Plus, I still had 1 more cast member to record. Luckily this character was only in the first and last scene, and thus was easy enough to record. Since this person wasn’t an actor by trade, it took a little more directing to get it all on point and to sound natural, rather than sounding like someone trying to act (as it had done in the read through). Luckily, I had help with the directing in the form of my mother, who has had experience with using different voices, and thus could direct the cast member better than I could.

Some sounds I recorded myself, and some I download from the internet. With everything I used, I made sure that it was either copyright free, or free to use for non-profit projects.

Sound effects I did myself was the cat meow (my cat meows a lot so that was perfect), glass/teacups being put on a table, the pouring of liquid into a cup, and the sound of a metal pole hitting the ground (heard at the very beginning). Some of them may have been recycled from my last audio play.

[airalihsa]

Concept Ideas

Before my final idea (Tale of Akari), I had two concept ideas. One was an audio play, and the other was a film.

The film concept would’ve been about a group of intellectual people who were abducted by mysterious aliens. This group would then have to play a series of games, the ones who lose are sent back to earth with their memories wiped, and those that win are sent a colony the aliens have set up for highly intellectual humans. The story would’ve been centred around one of the losers, who starts to remember the events of the abduction through flash backs. This idea was heavily inspired by Squid Game (2021) and 3% (2016).  

I decided not to go this concept as I believed it was too much of an ambitious project for me, and I did not see who I would be able to fit the story into 10 minutes. I did consider making it an audio, but I didn’t quite like the idea of it in audio.

The audio play concept was about a traveller from space who crash lands on a planet that is still in its medieval-like era. It would’ve been more of a fantasy, than sci-fi. I wanted to make it into a sort of treasure hunting adventure story similar to that of the Uncharted (2007) series.

Uncharted was a big inspiration for this idea, and it was my main idea for a while, but when I needed to draft up a story, I just couldn’t. The original idea for the story was about different groups of people searching for an other-worldly treasure, that used to belong to the protagonist, but who lost it 10 years prior. I couldn’t see a way to move forward with the concept other than an idea. That’s when I decided to rethink my idea. I’ll talk more about that in the next post (Process of Audio Project).

[airalihsa]

Introduction to the Reflection & Process of my Audio Play “Tale of Akari”

On Wednesday 11th May, third year Performance and Media students held an event at USW to showcase the major projects that they had all created. This showcase was named The Roaring 20s.

I shared my audio project Tale of Akari in this showcase. My project was one of two audio pieces in the showcase, and it was second in line at the viewing or should I say listening in this case.

In the next few posts, I will be sharing my original concept ideas, talking about the process of making my audio play, my inspirations, my design choices, how I was able to come up with the story, how maladaptive daydreaming helped me with my project, the problems I came across along the way and how I solved them, what I would do differently if I had the chance, what I learnt during the experience, and what I thought of the outcome of my project.

[airalihsa]

Bibliography

Bibliography

How has the Film Industry been affected by Covid-19?

Mission Impossible 7 (2022) Directed by Christopher McQuarrie [Film]. USA: Paramount Pictures.

Hooper, N. (2021) ‘Mission Impossible becomes an impossible mission as 'filming in the UAE is ABANDONED after fed-up crew demand to be sent home due to looming Covid travel restrictions', Mail Online, 12 February [Online] Available at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9255325/Mission-Impossible-filming-UAE-ABANDONED-pandemic-crew-sent-home.html(Accessed: 12 April 2021)

Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph (1997) Netflix (Version 7.99.0) [Computer Programme] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/app(Accessed: 12 Aril 2021)

The Society (2019) Netflix, May 10.

I Am Not Okay with This (2020) Netflix, 26 February.

Altered Carbon (2018) Netflix, 2 February.

Uncharted (2022) Directed by Ruben Fleischer [Film]. USA: Sony Pictures Releasing.

Lucifer (2016) Fox, Netflix, 25 January.

Venable, N. (2020) ‘Why Netflix Cancelled I Am Not Okay With This, According To The Creator’ Cinema Blend, 29 October [Online] Available at https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2557991/why-netflix-cancelled-i-am-not-okay-with-this-according-to-the-creator(Accessed: 12 April 2021)

Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger (2006) Instagram (Version 184.0.0.30.117) [Computer Programme] Available at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instagram.android&hl=en_GB&gl=USor https://apps.apple.com/us/app/instagram/id389801252(Accessed: 12 April 2021)

How does Dixon describe the Relationship between Artist and Technology?

Smith, A. (no date given) Steve Dixon (2007) Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Available at: https://culturemachine.net/reviews/dixon-digital-performance-smith/(Accessed: 13 April 2021)

Dontnod Entertainment, Deck Nine (2015) Life is Strange (Standard Edition)

Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX One [Computer game] Square Enix

Naughty Dog (2013) The Last of Us (Standard Edition) PS3, PS4 [Computer game] Sony Computer Entertainment

How the internet has challenged the notion of ‘liveness’ in performance?

Heffernan, K. (2020) ‘The way the Internet has challenged the notion of liveness in performance’, Kez New Media Performance Blog, 15 March. Available at: https://keznewmedia.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-way-internet-has-challenged-notion.html(Accessed: 14th April 2021)

Bungie (2017) Destiny 2 (Edition Standard) PS4, XBOX One, PC [Computer game]. Bungie.

ZeniMax Online Studios (2014) The Elder Scrolls Online (Edition Standard) PS4, XBOX One, PC [Computer game]. Bethesda Softworks

Media Molecule (2020) Dreams (Edition Standard) PS4 [Computer game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment

Bethesda Game Studios (2011) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Edition Standard) PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX One, Nintendo Switch [Computer game] Bethesda Softworks

Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, Kyle Vogt, Kevin Lin (2011) Twitch (Version 10.6.0) [Computer Programme]. Available at: https://www.twitch.tv/downloads/

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What advantages are there to an intermedial approach to theatre and performance making?

Zuccala, A. (2021) ‘Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’ performed live with motion capture tech’, City Matter, 9 February [Online] Available at: https://www.citymatters.london/dream-live-online-performance-technology-overhaul/(Accessed: 15 April 2021)

Net Wars Episode I: The Fandom Menace

John Williams (1977) Star Wars: A New Hope (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [CD]

Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977) Directed by George Lucas [Film]. USA: 20th Century Fox.

CD Projekt Red (2007) The Witcher (Standard Edition) PC [Computer Game] Atari (retail) CD Projekt

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Steven Yan (2020) Star Wars Intro Title Crawl Effect - After Effects CC Tutorial (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdWJUdOJEBI(Accessed: 16 March 2021)

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[airalihsa]

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Laying the Foundation of our Performance

We had many ideas in the beginning ranging from a social media story that was purely on social media, to a film style performance of a man coming to terms with his own passing.

As we got more info for our assessment, we realised that some of these were not appropriate for the guidelines. We all needed to find an idea that we all liked and could all work with. Toms’ idea was great but worked better as an individual project. His idea was about a man coming to terms with his own passing, and that topic made me very uncomfortable. So, we went against it. Ioan had an idea that was based on social media, I had an idea that was based on fandoms, and Alex had an idea based on Wrestling.

After we made all the connections between the 3 ideas, we had decided on the base foundation of our performance. The conflicts within fandoms online/on social media. At the time I was very interested in Star Wars (1977) and Alex was interested in Wrestling, because of this we went for an Act like story. Act 1 being about Star Wars Fandoms, Act 2 being about Wrestling, and Act 3, well we couldn’t come up with any ideas for that.

During this time, we had come up with a schedule for when we would have a meeting. 5pm every Thursday, and occasionally on Sundays.

The Beginning

Our keyword, as chosen by the class, was reaction. This meant we had to create a performance based on this word. We did lots of research into what could link into the word, we had general conversations to see if we could find something that could be adapted into a play. With these two methods of research and conversation, we were able to come up with the foundation of Net Wars.

We came to the conclusion that a big source of reaction can be found on social media platforms. We started discussing reactions to content people have posted online such as Star Wars fans reacting to the films they dislike or The Last of Us fans reacting to the casting of their beloved characters for a live action show. Alex even mentioned an experience he had where he reacted to a post and someone had a negative reaction to him.

This all came to the conclusion of a keyword for our performance. Gatekeeping. At the time, I had no knowledge of what a gatekeeper was on social media. The specific term trope we went for was a gatekeeper within a fandom. These are fans who are usually older or have been in a certain fandom for a long time, and they usually impose standards to newcomers, or reject them completely.

Examples of gatekeeping in fandoms can include: Commenting negatively on something you don’t like, e.g, posting a comment saying that you don’t like a certain character or film and anyone who is a fan of those things aren’t true fans in the fandom. Hating on a casting of an adaption to something you’re a fan of and claiming that the newcomers who joined the fandom because of the adaptation and cast aren’t real fans. Reacting negatively to posts you don’t agree with.

This is seen a lot in such as Star Wars, and The Last of Us as well as many other fandoms. Many older fans in SW claim that sequel fans aren’t true Star Wars fans. In the Last of Us fandom, there was an uproar due to the casting of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie. Many original and hardcore fans started to gatekeep new fans, and one Instagram user that I follow commented this “don’t come in here and pretend to love the characters just because your favourite actors are playing them, and don’t come in here saying Bella and Pedro are YOUR Ellie and Joel.” A similar thing happened a few years ago when Henry Cavill was casted as Geralt of Rivia. Many Witcher (2007) fans were hating on him and gatekeeping him and his fans. In the end when the show was released, it united the fans.

After doing all this research and investigation. We chose that developing a story around a gatekeeper and how a fandom would react would be a good way to go.

Realisation

After writing part of the script and rehearsing it a few times, we came to the realisation that the performance we had, did not quite work. We couldn’t figure out how to tie each act to each other without it looking like we were performing three different stories. This caused us to go back to the drawing board.

Since we all liked Act 1, we decided to keep it and make Act 2 and 3 part of Act 1. That’s when we decided to turn our performance into a somewhat parody of Star Wars.

The Title Crawl

We decided that we would have a Star Wars style title crawl. Some of us looked online to see if we could get a custom one made, but there were no professional looking ones that were free. That’s when I realised that I had recently been learning how to use Adobe After Effects (1993).

I found a tutorial on YouTube that went into detail on how to create this opening. (Steven Yan, 2020). It was difficult at first and I struggled to get the text to move correctly at first, but after a recreated the text in a separate layer, it was able to work properly. The most difficult part was fading out the text when it goes near the top of the screen. The fading out would cause the illusion that it was very far away. I originally assumed that decreasing the opacity at the end of the clip would achieve this effect, but it didn’t. I later found out that I had to create another layer and erase the bottom of the screen, this then allowed the effect to work. It’s a lot more complicated than I made it sound. After all the technical stuff was finished, all I had to do was record the Star Wars opening song from Spotify, (2006) and  

It was a fun experience creating the title crawl, and it gave me a chance to make a big contribution to the group, which in previous assessments, I had failed at. I also came away with how to create a Star Wars style title crawl.

Which Platform to use?

Near the start of our rehearsals, we realised that we needed to do some research into what streaming platform we should use for our final performance. At the time we had been using Facebook Messenger (2011) for our rehearsals, but much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that this platform wouldn’t be suitable for a performance.

The pros to using FB Messenger were: Easy to use and access. Unlimited time.

The cons to using FB Messenger were: A limited number of people were allowed on a video call (around 15 people). Not ideal for screensharing. Not ideal for a performance (lacks features such as name changing and pinning).

We then did some research into other platforms such as Microsoft Teams (2017) (MT), and Zoom (2012). I myself had plenty of experience using MT, but the others did not, and that would not work out well if our tech expert Tom wasn’t able to share things such as the videos or play music on it. We in the end came to the conclusion the Zoom would work best for our needs.

The pros to using Zoom: It’s a lot more flexible in terms of interactivity. Can change your name to the character you are playing. Much easier to screen share content such as videos, music, etc. Allows many people to be in one call.

The cons to using Zoom: Limited time (around 40mins free).

Since Zoom had a limited time, we decided we needed to find a way around it. Unfortunately, none of us had an account that was subscribed to Zoom, and none of us were willing to pay for it. Luckily Ioan’s dad had an account that had unlimited time, the downside to that though, the links for that account were called Church of Jesus Christ. This meant that some people assumed that it was named that way for the performance. We decided that yes, it was a bit of an inconvenience, but we had no other alternative, so we would just use it and let people know that the name of the link to the performance has no relation to our play.

The Final Performance

From my point of view the performance went very well. We managed to achieve the correct time limit, we had no technical problems, and it was enjoyable.

The week before we had a few problems such as accidentally taking someone else’s lines, or having long awkward pauses when getting videos up, but we managed to fix those problems.

If there was anything I could change before the final performance, it would be to properly have a script that was the right amount of time from the beginning. Our script was always too long, and we had some great and humorous parts in it, but we had to cut a lot of it out the day before the performance as it was too long, and we had to make sure there was time for our interactive element.

One more thing I would change, is to have more pre-recorded footage, instead of just recording footage for the meme section of the performance.

[airalihsa]

What advantages are there to an intermedial approach to theatre and performance making?

Throughout the years there have been many types of intermedial approaches. One such is combining motion capture with onstage performances. This became slightly more common during covid as a way to try and keep live theatre active, without having an audience within the theatre itself. The actors act on stage in motion capture suits and are recorded for a live audience to see.

One key example is the play Dreams by Shakespeare. It was recently adapted by the Royal Shakespeare Company into an interactive online motion capture play. This play allowed audience members to directly influence the characters in the play.

There are many other forms of intermedial, such as combining live streams with live onstage performances, pre-recorded footage combined with live on stage acting, etc.

Covid has caused many theatre productions to resort to live streaming for their audiences.

The advantages of these types of performances are that is allows more people to see the productions. Many stage productions require audience members to physically be there, so this meant that many people who may not have been able to travel or have busy lives, were not able to see it. With live streaming, it allows those people to be able to see it the plays without actually being there.

A key advantage of the play Dreams is that it allowed more types of people, than just theatre goers to see the event. Depending on the person, a gamer is more unlikely to go and watch a theatre production because of a) the lack of interactivity, and b) it may be too far to go. According to Zuccala (2020) Dreams was a free to watch event, with a £10 fee if you wished to take part, and at key points, influence the characters and world.

[airalihsa]

How the internet has challenged the notion of ‘liveness’ in performance?

Kerrigan Heffernan (2020) explored the many ways that the internet has challenged the notion of liveness in performance. The internet has bought a vast new array of types of performances. These would be called cyberformance and hyperperformance. These can be used in different ways to create performances. Places where you could find performances online are, Virtual Worlds, Streaming Media, and Social Media.

Virtual Worlds. Performances can be created and devised in many ways. From MMO games such as Destiny 2 (2017) and Elder Scrolls Online (2014), to creative games such as Dreams (2020), to open world narrative games. Players in an MMO could devise a performance by communicating with each other, and using such things known as emotes, which would make the players character do different movements from dancing, fishing, clapping, being bored, or even eating. Games such as Dreams, are very rare and unique. They’re about world building, and specifically in Dreams, the player can create a whole new game, relaxing scenery, or even a performance. In an open world game such as the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), players can devise their own story, by venturing off into the wilderness and do whatever, become a thief, magician, merchant, murderer, warrior, of even a family man/woman.

Streaming Media. Kerrigan Heffernan (2020) states that this is similar to virtual worlds, except it is mainly pre-recorded, with the exceptions of live performances or livestreams. There are many streaming services such as Twitch (2011), Netflix, Disney+ (2019), YouTube (2005), and much more. Services like Twitch and YouTube allow performance to create a performance and stream or upload to viewers around the world.  Services like Netflix and Disney+ are mainly for pre-recorded high budget productions.

Social Media. This type allows for a different convention of performance. The likes of roleplay. This is when a performer creates a character and story and posts new content on platforms such as Instagram as if they were really that character.

[airalihsa]

How does Dixon describe the Relationship between Artist and Technology?

Dixon talks about many different forms of when technology is used by artists. He talks about early dance software in which the used motion capture to create virtual dancers that would be projected onto the stage along real-life dancers.

Smith (no date given) says that Dixon states that virtual and digital technology has made a range of effects within performances possible. He mentions that with VR (Virtual Reality) technology, almost anything is possible. From a scenic landscape, to the recreation of Roman or Greek theatres. He also says how VR is used to create immersive set designs for live actors or dancers.

Dixon later goes into talking about the use of the internet and the online world for performances. He mentions that the internet has hosted a range online experiments from non-linear narratives, to performance content generated from an online audience, and much more.

When it comes to the interactivity of performance, Dixon talks about how the notion of play combines all four of the main categories that make up the notion of interactivity within a performance (Navigation, Participation, Conversation, and Collaboration). He says the video games are constructed within the well-known parameters of theatre.

There are many different video games out there, ranging from simple indie games, to blockbuster AAA games. Many people may not know this, but video games aren’t just simple shooting games, many of them are very theatrical, and were originally performed on motion capture. Games such as Life is Strange (2015) is an interactive game and can be considered a performance. Games such as the Last of Us (2013) are very much like cinema films, just with interactivity.

[airalihsa]

How has the Film Industry been affected by Covid-19?

It’s hard to talk about just one film/tv company. Many companies have been affected, and the majority of them have been affected/responded the same way as each other.

At the start of the pandemic, all companies had to suspend filming, whether it was a small production or a large production, they all had to suspend filming. When all the cast and crew for Mission Impossible 7 (2022) were sent home, the set was apparently relocated to the UK to allow for safer measures. According to Hooper (2021) Tom Cruise has since then built a covid secure studio in a former secret military base, due to various crew members not abiding by social distancing regulations.

Some, but not all productions were cancelled indefinitely due to covid-19. Netflix (1997) cancelled the production of two of their shows because of the pandemic. According to Venable (2020) After only 1 season of The Society (2019), and I am Not Okay with This (2020), Netflix decided not to continue with them, even though they had announced a second season for these two shows. They cancelled other shows such as Altered Carbon (2018), but they have stated that those other cancellation have not been caused by the pandemic.

Many productions resumed filming in June, July, and August. The film adaption of the video game Uncharted (2022) resumed filming in June, and the Netflix show Lucifer (2016) resumed filming their fifth season in August. There have been many precautions on the sets and while filming. Not much is known about the precautions on Uncharted, but it is mostly likely they get regular tests, socially distance, and have PPE.

More is known on the precautions on the set of Lucifer, since the cast and crew such as Aimee Garcia have been sharing many behind the scenes of filming during the pandemic on Instagram (2006). They all had 2-meter sticks, they were face covering, and when they travelled between sets, only one cast member could travel at a time. When filming romantic scenes, many people asked if there would be kisses between characters in the episodes filmed in the pandemic, and the answer was that the script had been modified to show other ways of conveying the feelings between the characters. Also, cast and crew were apparently tested daily for covid-19.