Tuesday, April 9, 2019

LIVR: A new perspective on theatre.

Over the years I've seen many fantastic plays. But what happens to them when the curtain falls? In a best case scenario, they might get a regional tour or the occasional revival, but eventually they all simply cease to be, the only evidence they were ever there at all a handful of press shots, the odd review and fading memories. 

LIVR aims for something more comprehensive: recording, preserving, archiving and broadcasting theatre in virtual reality. Their method is to place a 360° camera in the front row of a theatre show with its lens at roughly head-height and simply record the show. When you slide a headset on and click play you're in that front row seat. On a basic level it works, providing a decent simulation of being sat in the theatre.

As anyone familiar with theatre knows, the experience isn't simply what's happening on stage. The venue can provide a tonne of atmosphere (especially if the site is interesting in its own right). 

For example, Out of the Forest Theatre's Bury the Hatchet was performed at the Vault in May 2018. Anyone who's seen a performance there will recognise the stained and damp subterranean Victorian brickwork, with high ceilings providing powerful acoustics and trains rumbling overhead like distant thunder. LIVR's video captures all this - it's a surreal situation to be sat in a virtual version of a theatre I know very well.

Being able to choose where you look in VR also works very well for theatre. One of the benefits theatre has over other storytelling media is that you decide what you want to focus on. For example, in a video recording of a play, the natural thing to do would be to focus on a character giving a grand speech, but in VR you can choose to watch other characters react to it instead just as you would if you were actually there.

That said, right now there are a couple of flies in the ointment. I was demoed LIVR on an Oculus Go, though I believe it's currently only commercially available as an app on the Apple and Android stores. While smartphone-based VR is the easiest entrypoint, it isn't comfortable to watch hour-long shows using HMDs that support the weight of the screen on your face rather than the back of your head. LIVR is currently planning on expanding to other VR platforms, and it'd be far more comfortable to watch a show on, say, Playstation VR, which supports the weight of the screen using the back of your head.

Another major hurdle LIVR has to clear is image quality. In an ideal world, VR video would be as high-resolution as possible, but you must make compromises when you're delivering video to an app (either by downloading or streaming). The resolution of the videos I saw was a little low, which impacted the immersive factor of 'being there'.

Frame-rate is also a problem. In several of the shows I demoed an actor moving quickly across a stage appeared jerky and slightly blurry. The ideal for VR video is 90fps, though once again that results in large file sizes that are impracticable for delivering to mobile devices.

Finally, LIVR has chosen to avoid stereoscopic (3D) videos. Their reasoning is that watching an hour-long stereoscopic video causes eye-strain. That might be the case, but several of the shows I demoed would be much more engaging in 3D (Boys, for example). 3D is one of the main advantages of any kind of VR content, so even if does cause eye-strain it'd be nice to have it as an option.

But I don't want to sound too down on LIVR - these issues are all solved problems for VR developers, and they just need to be implemented in a cost-effective and bandwidth conscious way. LIVR is a new company with big plans and as they refine their recording processes, as fibre internet becomes more common and as VR technology advances, these technical hurdles will be cleared.

But even now they're getting a whole lot right. What really impressed me when chatting with the company was how much they genuinely appreciated theatre. Hearing someone speaking about the magic of smaller-scale theatre and the importance of preserving performances for future viewers was music to my ears. 

On top of that LIVR opens up theatrical performances to people who are unable to attend due to accessibility requirements or because they're not based in London - not to mention providing actors, writer and directors with a record of their performance that captures what other media can't.

It's a smart and effective use of VR technology, but more importantly, LIVR has the right philosophy. I can't wait to see where they go next.

Check out LIVR on their website and here on Instagram.

Tags: , , ,

0 Responses to “LIVR: A new perspective on theatre.”

Post a Comment

© All articles copyright LONDON CITY NIGHTS.
Designed by SpicyTricks, modified by LondonCityNights