Lights and Sound: Video throughout show?

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Video throughout show?

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Lights and Sound
Forum Discription: Technical discussion
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4217
Printed Date: 5/04/25 at 12:03am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Video throughout show?

Posted By: kaelidancer
Subject: Video throughout show?
Date Posted: 8/31/09 at 12:19pm

Hello again, fellow drama nerds :)

So here's my current brainstorm - I'd like to have a video that runs throughout a show. It would have to be something that auto-pauses between segments, and can be triggered with a fairly easy keystroke from the booth to resume when cued. The operator hits spacebar (or whatever), and the video plays until the next segment ends, where it automatically pauses itself.

A lot of the segments will be still images and/or smooth-fading slideshows rather than actual video, but there will be some video footage as well.

I'm thinking Flash or Powerpoint may be the easiest way to do this, but I wanted to double-check here. Has anybody done something like this before? What sort of software did you use to create the presentation?

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Kaeli Gardner
Johnson City Community Theatre
http://www.jcct.us - www.jcct.us
http://www.gardnerarts.com - www.gardnerarts.com

Replies:

Posted By: MartyW
Date Posted: 9/01/09 at 9:24am

We just did the wizard of oz.. due to time constraints, size of facility etc. we did as little "set" as possible. But we projected an appropriate back drop throughout the show. We did the "classic" approach where kansas is black and white whre we showed the "farm" behind the house and yard scenes, a wheat field behind the profesors wagon, then we had an video tornado sequence we had colorful back drop pictures for munchkin land and oz, used tree gobo's to augment the forest, bright cornfields and poppie fields etc etc.. it worked great... We even projected oz head and the witches castle. It was well recieved by the crowd. We used power point to "tab" our way through all of the images and video..

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Marty W

"Till next we trod the boards.."

Posted By: shoreman905
Date Posted: 2/12/10 at 9:21am

We have limited space in our theater, as it is a converted movie theater and have been using projected backdrops for seven years now. Our method is to develop backdrops in Photoshop and compile them into a dvd. I chapter each backdrop or segment and the operator simply hits advance to change the scene. There are two ways to do this, first using just a dvd player, or the more acurate method, a laptop where the operator can see the scene before revealing it. We have been able to custom create animation in this method and we have had great reviews from the audiences for years. One note: since this is forward projection, the frame may cast upon the actors. (this is experience talking, some white windows showed on our actors and was very cheap looking, I learned then) I put a black area at the bottom of each frame (an area I call the Actor Safe Zone) gauged to the tallest actor in the production, that saves the situation. You can allow full projection for things like snow animation to cast onto your actors. To compile the dvd, I use Adobe Priemer Pro, but the less expensive Priemer Elements is just fine and very easy to learn and use, even Roxio will fit the bill nicely.