For ages, technology has been used to help storytellers showcase their work and reach out to their audience in new ways. From film cameras and surround sound and the Internet, the possibilities seem endless, but what if you wanted to blend a live stage show with filmed action on a movie screen? We set out on a quest to find out.

This past February, producers/artistic directors Bonnie Bogovich and Liz Rishel came to me to discuss their latest project, “Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera.” Not only was I already hooked to become a part of an opera based on zombies, but they wanted even more. Bonnie and Liz presented the concept of combining traditional theater with projected video backgrounds in the place of conventional sets. The (insanely awesome) idea would expand a normal stage experience into a multimedia paradise of live actors and cinematic moments that can only be made possible with a film camera.

Okay, let’s recap: Real people on stage in front of a prerecorded video projected on a movie screen

As the project’s director of video production, I was immediately faced with some exciting challenges:

1. How do we create images for video projection that can ‘interact’ with our actors on stage?
2. What format should we shoot on? (Resolution? Focal lengths?)
3. How do we compose these images in a way that produces the illusion of realistic, life-sized characters? (Distance from action? Height of camera?)

The answer to practically all of these questions was simple: Try it out and see what happens. So I grabbed my trusty Canon Rebel T2i DSLR and started shooting scenes with my brother/video assist expert, Brian Bogovich.

The first test involved a large living room setting where we experimented how far the camera should be from the actors. With the screen of the theater being about 10′ tall, we knew that a 6′ tall person should look slightly taller than half the frame (see the above image). Based on these facts, we shot the following scene, placing the camera 10′ away from the actors, and at about eye level for a person sitting in a chair.

18mm at 10' away

Yikes!! Immediately after the camera stopped rolling, we realized that at 18mm, a person standing 10′ away from the camera would look like a monster! So in take #2, we reshot with the action 15′ away and BOOM! Perfect height.

18mm at 15' away

At this point, we were feeling okay, we had some room on the left for the action to enter/exit the frame, and although the right side still looked too close for comfort, it would probably be cropped off anyways. This past monday we borrowed a space and a projector to see just how realistic it was. The results were surprisingly good!

Scene Projected

With a simple projector displaying onto a wall exactly 10′ tall, the action in the foreground (15′ away from our camera) looked just about right. As you can see in the above image, my figure looks like I can take a sit right there in the folding chair (if only I wasn’t digitized!). Liz in the ’stage’ area could walk close to the projection and fit right in. (Note: The projector we will use in the theater can project within 3′ of the screen, our test projector could not do this so we just placed on a table)

Still, something wasn’t exactly perfect. We were seeing way too much floor, and Brian’s figure in the background was too high on the screen to be realistic. I determined that the issue was the height of the tripod at the time of shooting. After a couple tests we came up with a better combination: 18mm, 15′ away, 2′ 9″ high.

18mm at 15' away 2' 9 high

Notice the height of the far door (about 7 feet tall)

We quickly threw the clips into our laptop and took a look. With the camera being slightly lower than our previous test, the floor appeared lower in the frame. And now the final test. Projected on screen with real people in the foreground… Success! I think we’re onto something here.

So there you have it, our magical formula for creating a fictional world behind real live actors. Although the test footage is rough (and green, yuck!), you can expect something very cool growing from this test in the future at the live show, “Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera” coming to Pittsburgh in Fall 2010!