3d and live action short film: LiViCi

LiViCi: Live, Interactive Circus

I was approached for a uniquely challenging show by a team looking for a DP who could help integrate Unreal Engine and live action elements to create a circus show which would be viewed in four ways, all for a live audience.

1) The show was presented to a live studio audience with performers in front of a 40x60 LED wall.

2) The show was streamed live in traditional 2d, with me live switching between 5 live action cameras, and about 190 angles I had pre-set up in Unreal Engine.

3) Interactive 2d stream. This was a stream available to watch on phones or web browsers, in which users could fly around the virtual world with their friends in a multiplayer experience, and watch the show unfold from wherever they pleased.

4) Live in VR where audiences could fully experience the show from any perspective in live 3D.

Working with this incredible team of amazing artists and technicians was a truly remarkable experience. I had never worked in a "live" medium before. It was exhilarating doing the editing live for two shows, cutting between the 5 live action cameras which I carefully placed, and technically directed over comms and the roughly 190 Unreal Engine cameras I had placed to capture the carefully choreographed live performance.

The performers were live motion captured and my live action cameras often included their image, and the image of their 3d avatar at the same time which created quite a busy and possibly confusing image. I wanted to create a flow where the audience would be able to slowly absorb what was happening.

In the early part of the show, I aimed to create compositions which blended the live action and 3d spaces cohesively, coordinating stage lighting with the lighting in the virtual environments in simple, wide compositions which were easily legible.

However, as the show progresses over the 20 or so minutes I began to push the compositions - I placed virtual cameras facing live action cameras, knowing that the two images would be a mirror - one side of the mirror has the digital world, and the other side is the physical world.

With the aerial hoop dance in the finale, I amped up the surrealism. I was counting on the idea that by then we had the audience transfixed, and that over the course of the show they had become adept at the unique visual language we had created, so I wanted to expand the visual vocabulary for the finale with spinning bird's eye shots, very low angle shots where the dancer passes close to a wide lens, ending with a two kilometer helicopter shot.

While Livici was just a prototype, it clearly shows what the future of live entertainment could be.