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| Van Nuys Fly Away at time of writing. |
We live streamed 16 shows from the Hollywood Fringe, across 4 days, using a mobile 4G hotspot for our internet connection. Technically speaking, we knew we were taking a risk but we'd tested the hotspots a number of times. Logistically we knew we were taking a risk, each show lasted about an hour and then there was 15 minutes to turnaround the theatre space from one show to the next. But the key was whether the streams be watchable and whether the viewers would enjoy the shows.
Logistically and technologically we had a resounding success. The streams too, were watchable and enjoyable. We got lots of praise for our work and inspired people to want to work with us in the future. We even had a positive effect on the audience numbers of some of the shows.
I guess I should just happily say, "A Success." But will I leave it there? No, I'm Scottish and that means nothing is perfect and everything is not quite good enough. This might seem harsh, and sometimes in Scotland this attitude is way too harsh, but for me it's fueled my obsession to improve and develop. Sometimes this outlook means that I don't sell myself or my achievements as well as I should and that can be destructive. At the Hollywood Fringe though, it meant that I moved so far forward, that my final show was a two camera shoot of 5 performers backed by 7 musicians; a show that I loved and was proud to stream.
So what's next? Well as I type this, I'm projecting flying doves onto the parking structure of Van Nuys Fly Away bus station as part of a performance art piece... and all I can think about, is how I could live stream this. Where ever there's an interesting performance, I want to share it.
Very cool!!! I am very impressed with the tech accomplishment using the 4G hotspot allowing your streaming to be really mobile. My experience with them is that they are inconsistent on speeds, but that may just be our area (Texas). Very cool working with performance art too. We've got a nice little arts community here, I've got to show them your stuff!!! Again, very very cool!!! (I used to work for the Department of Redundancy Department)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're not shy about discussing improvement.. you're doing something experimental, so inventing wheels & improving things as you go is par for the course. (At the risk of self-promoting but for the sake of expediency, I blogged something about my thoughts on that topic recently here: http://discotrope.org/?p=546)
ReplyDeleteSo what I found interesting following your process was that the situation constrained what you could do, and you had to figure out what audiovisual information was most important for the plays specifically. For example, faces often seemed important for the audience to connect with characters, even though closeups might not have been practical or necessary. It was nice to see how you worked out a solution to that in the last show that helped ground the audience in both the characters and the space of the stage. You can guess at and plan some of these things, but usually it's when you dive in and do it that the project really "tells you what it needs."
Nice test on the Fly Away projection performance - esp. given the laptop webcam where you can't control exposure, etc. And thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one crazy enough to want to live stream projections on buildings at night and dancers simultaneously. ;-) BTW, I'm writing this on a wifi-equipped plane. So to round off the ethereal experience, I've watched the fluttering dancers and the floating projections at the Fly Away while flying way above the USA as flaming fireworks fleetingly float below...
I didn't use flit. Oh...