We arrived early in the morning and after spending hours on the set, we began a tight rehearsal. At this stage, all team members contributed to the final sprint, and I am extremely proud of our capacity to learn from it and consistently reflect
Set Design Concept
At the beginning, I would like to explain the specific set design concept. When designing the entrance set, our primary concern was directing the audience correctly. This became evident during rehearsals when the first two audience members veered off course despite the floor light strips meant to guide them. To address this, I decided to enclose the walkway with bubble wrap, ensuring only one clear path for the audience to follow. This bubble wrap blocking the road will be removed immediately after the performance in the corridor, because it will be a key passageway for actors and dancers waiting for the main set to follow.
Here is the prelude – the first small screen projection, which serves to guide the audience to slowly integrate into the overall atmosphere and drive the mood to better provide an immersive performance subsequently. The projected content here does not need to show too much narrative but mainly live music and motion images produced by AI, as we prefer to achieve the purpose of driving the mood. We initially set it up with Xianni playing in the corner as the drummer. However, after a few rehearsals, we realised that it would be best toplace her on the role of lead, playing the drums in front of the audience and guiding them into the main stage. Such a decision enhances the performance, as it allows the audience to receive clearer information in the darkness to keep the story flowing.
Here we come to the main stage area! Firstly we demarcated the audience from the stage area, using bubble wrap and conspicuous sound-activated light strips as dividing lines. This is because we want to fix the scope of the performance to avoid dancing or actors accidentally injuring the audience. As you may see 3 individual screens are working together around the stage— the left and right ones show our interactives to echo the story and pull in the atmosphere. For example, for the Devil’s Whisper sequence, we would draw the viewer’s eye to the left by using real-time face imaging on the left screen to draw the eye to the left, while the main screen in the centre featured a silhouette of the dance. The purpose of this is to briefly take the audience out of the third view and into the first view of Carp, to feel the dark and depressing mood. The interaction on the right side varies the abstract graphics mainly according to the live sound. The reason we didn’t make it narrative is that I didn’t want too much screen switching to disrupt the audience’s thinking and the coherence of the story. Thus, its main role is also to render the atmosphere.
Rehearsals
These rehearsals before the official performance were significant for us, as we identified and adjusted many problems in advance, removing obstacles for the subsequent performances. I’ve summarised the experience of a few rehearsals here, and the points that needed tweaking:
- Bubble wrap will be required to block the pathways at all points of entry, keeping only one in the correct direction to ensure that the audience does not go astray.
- It is a good idea to have a drummer at the front of the corridor to lead the audience.
- The sound-activated light strips separating the audience from the main stage are a little too bright and can detract from the visual experience. It’s just a shame that by the time we realised this problem we had an official show coming up, so we didn’t have time to rearrange it.
- Better to turn the lights all the way up at the end of the film, and for everyone to come up on stage together to take a bow and give a curtain call as a sign of respect and true closure.
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We were setting up the scene when a misunderstanding led us to use a ladder at random – this would not be allowed. This should be noted in the future and must be used only after requesting the assistance of a safety manager.rehearsal 2 video:
