As a proof of concept project, one of our goals is to explore how to include actors and directors during the development remotely. In our case, we have an amazing acting team who fully supports us, but we are not allowed to contact them in-person/on-site due to the COVID restrictions. Therefore, we tried to use online meeting tools, like Zoom, as the solution.
At the beginning of this semester, as creative director, Stephanie shared the scripts and went through every designing detail. After the team(ReAct) having a picture of the show, Stephanie invited the players to the meetings to join the design conversations. Juwan, the actor who plays Genie, and Nikhil, the actor who plays Aladdin, are both professional and passionate about the whole project. We asked them questions about their expectation of AR effects, the imagination of interacting with invisible digital assets, and their feedback on our progress. Based on their answer, Stephanie and our team could keep iterating the design.
Until this week, after we finished the ground plan and set up as our venue, it’s the first time we could dive into the blocking according to the auditorium setting. Since clients and some of our teammates could not be on-site, we used Zoom on our phone to stream and do the virtual blocking.
Honestly, Zoom is not a perfect tool for streaming because the resolution is not clear, and it’s hard to hear others when we were walking around in the auditorium for setting blocking and measuring without headphones. However, considering Zoom is the tool we used to meet, and it is easy to share cloud recordings of the meetings, we don’t want to take a risk to try another new communication tool at this moment.
After Stephanie remotely assist us in designing the blocking, we taped a lot on the floor to mark the positions for AR effects and actors. We also measured the whole room and came up with the following ground plan.
With clear blockings, show-ready equipment, and a solid build of AR venue, David and I (Leo) spent an afternoon here to rehearsal this five-minute-length show for the incoming playtest this Saturday!
