Live Design Briefing Room press release archives: Brisbane-based projection designers Optikal Bloc used Dataton WATCHOUT multi-display software to create an eerie setting for a compelling tale in a recent touring production of Wuthering Heights. The Shake & Stir Theatre Co version of Emily Brontë's classic novel, originally performed in 2014, played at 26 venues across Australia in 2016.
3 comments:
This is awesome technology which I’m sure is an enormous time saver for the media design industry. Media is catching up with something similar to focus pallets where it makes it much easier to transition from venue to venue without having to completely go back to square one and alter each cue individually to ensure it works as it did in the last space. I also think it is cool that this complex, customizable system is being fired by a stage manager from Qlab MIDI signals which — I guess — is cheaper for the tour, but it really shows how much they trust the system to not have a dedicated operator who could be there incase anything went wrong. The linked video to the time-lapse really shows how complex the mapping is and how little movements from venue to venue could completely throw off the projection mapping and cause a huge headache for the media crew 26 times over.
it is amazing how technology can run so much for us this mapping software proves to me the inevitable advances in technology are going to transform how we present theater. i dose so much of what we had to do by yourself it is astonishing i look forward to this technology being utilized in larger and more ambitions productions.
WATCHOUT sounds like an extraordinary software that will allow for complex, crazy designs but will simplify it for the media operator when the show comes around. Before, it'd be extremely difficult to have a touring show with projections that sprawled scales as big as this one. However, with WATCHOUT, this is now possible. In addition, you don't need a separate operator controlling the projections since it's all remotely controlled by the stage manager. As William says, there is a high degree of trust in this system because you don't need someone there at all times watching it. This means more money and more time saved for any company that invests in WATCHOUT. In a way, the way WATCHOUT is used in Wurthering Heights reminds me of CMU's production of Lord of the Flies since they captured projections on the entirety of the stage. I really doubt we had an easier time here if we weren't using a system like WATCHOUT.
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