Shooting Water II

The development of the Main Stage video performance goes on: I assisted again Viara and Heikki, but this time we went to shoot some more water scenes at Antti’s apartment since he was the only one around that had a bathtub. Apparently bathtubs aren’t that common in finnish homes?

Viara did most of the modelling, I tried too but I couldn’t relax! It just scared me that we had a lamp hanging over a full bathtub, I really thought I was going to fry there. But Viara didn’t – and Heikki took great shots! Kasia was also there, taking pictures that she might use for the Swimmer’s mininroom.

Experimenting with Director

Last monday (12 Feb.) there have been more discussions with Chris and the students about the story development, and the STORY team could not rest yet – some more changes had to be done! So today we had a meeting with Joukko-Thomas and made some adaptations to the story being told at the ending of the show (we decided last monday that people should exit the show not from the Foyer, but from the Exploratory Area).

So, in the Exploratory Area people play the games or visit the installations to keep the tension rising as they are waiting to be summoned to the oracle and get their turn to speak with the goddess (entering the Divine Discourse installation, Tommi’s own project). Following that they are allowed to leave the show area.


Another thing I was doing with Chris and Tommi was a mockup for the interaction part in the fireman’s Miniroom. The room will be dark, so we want to use flashlights in it.

We are planning to have some objects scattered around the place, each object telling a small piece of the fireman’s life. So when people point their flashlights towards the objects, they will trigger some image projection; these images would be designed as a comic strip, telling pieces of the man’s life.

What we have done today was to experiment how the light sensors would work with a normal flashlight (we used a camera to work as a light sensor for now, since we didn’t have any!), and try to mock how the images would be shown.

Scheduling

Today we had a general meeting to discuss the flow of the events from the audience point of view, deciding how long should take each performance (the whole show should be about 1 hour long):

At 17:45
Audience members can enter the foyer. They are greeted by two "furies" who give them a TUIO sticker and ask a few simple questions (audience members write down the answers, like a questionaire). They look around and mingle.

At 18:00 (or probably a few minutes later)
The show starts. Audience members will be given a torch and told to enter the Swimmer or the Fireman corridor. As audience members enter the corridor, a video of them is being sampled by Viara's CCTV camera. This continues until all audience members have entered the corridor. It is expected that each person will take only 20 seconds to traverse the corridor experience.

At 18:05
Audience members find themselves then in a "miniroom" with an interactive installation in it. Fireman's room will involve using torches to illuminate/display sections of a comic book. Swimmer's room involves using torches or water (not sure yet) to change an interactive movie about the swimmer.

They will be held for c. 10 minutes in the room, under the guidance of a "fury", after which they'll be sheperded into the sunken audience area known as "the pit" i.e., the Main Stage.

At 18:15
As audience members enter the pit, a short audio piece is played (c. 5 mins, directed by Jouko-Thomas Kleine and Tommi). After this, Atle's "responsive surround sound environment" takes over (c. 5-8 minutes) and blends into Heikki&Viara's audiovisual show. (c. 20 minutes).

Finally, musical instruments are lowered into the Pit and a 5 minute "interactive cacophony" takes place (Antti and Tommi).

At 18:50
Audience members are shepherded by the Furies into the Exploratory Zone (E-Zone). They will spend c. 15 minutes here. The E-Zone is horseshoe shaped and contains about 8 self-contained small screen-based interactive projects.

At 19:05
The exact "closure" of the show hasn't been decided yet. Probably:

One installation, the Goddess Shrine, is the exit to the experience. Once audience members pass through (and interact with) the shrine, they leave the show (it is the rear exit to the Lume Studio Stage). On leaving, their TUIOs are recognised and they get some personalised goodbye spoken by a talking head (or rabbit, or monster) and they are given a printout about their personal "ending" to the show.

We will need:
Total computers: 20
Total projectors: 9
Total projection screens: 8
Total cameras: 6 (3 can be iSights)

Shooting Water

Today was the first day I felt the Memento Mori was really moving on: I went to Malmi swimminghall to help Viara and Heikki to shoot some video scenes that will be part of the Main Stage sequence. They had some more friends there to help out, mainly the girl swimmers and even a professional diver for shooting the underwater scenes!

The purpose of these video sequences was to visualize emotions related with a mystic character (the swimmer), in a mix of sensuality and deadly struggle with the water element, associated with her Near Death Experience.

Viara made the costumes herself and also put the make-up on the 3 girls that came to do the acting. They were really brave, having to swim with costumes and rope around them, and act as if they were drowning… it was scary but in the end nobody got hurt and we got really nice film shots!