#academyoflivetechnology — Public Fediverse posts

The Day the (SFX) Circus Came

Lancashire-based live effects wizards BPM SFX recently brought the heat to campus. With an incendiary portfolio including work with Sleep Token, Sum 41, and Oasis, they filled Studio 001 with stage-tech toys of varying lethality.

The session gave (sensibly supervised) students a chance to play with professional kit that ran the gamut from innocuous confetti and bubble machines through to lasers, flamers, pyrotechnics, and sparklers – although it was the hand-held flamethrower that demanded the most interaction.

Loving the smell of accelerants in the afternoon, I rolled up to try my hand at conflagration and take some photos and video in the process. With only my phone camera to hand, I noted a lot of shots with the default app were over-exposed, supersaturated and unusable. Switching to the Blackmagic Camera app for greater control, I was able to adjust ISO and increase shutter speed to better capture the experience – and thankfully record in landscape despite holding the phone vertically. The end result being a short little video to commemorate the day, even if YouTube’s compression fails to preserve the HDR intricacy of the original laser spread.

The soundtrack forms an early work-in-progress teaser of future Trismegistus Hex material. A cheeky, if not outright blatant homage to horror movie maestro John Carpenter, but likely to change substantially in the final cut.

We don’t normally get access to such gear during the course of our studies, so it was great to get hands-on and, for some students, spark new career possibilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib6JsZ28_c8

This is probably the first, last, and only time I’ll ever mention the former “Bad Boy” of “Pop”.

A common motif scattered around the Academy campus is the visage of Robbie Williams. Site-based stage innovators TAIT have built scenery for his prior productions, with the larger than life result donated afterwards to make an effective fire assembly point. In wintry weather I observe it’s not the first time he’s had snow on his nose.

On a smaller scale, a 3D-fabricated sculpture of his face provided a challenging projection mapped surface as my Visuals module heads toward end-of-term assessment. Indulging a desire to integrate facial projection into future projects, this was the ideal static subject to try things out over a few hours of experimental studio time.

Despite any knowledge of his career purely culled by cultural osmosis (really!), I was able to piece together a collage of clips to represent the journey. With a simian base layer invoking the Better Man biopic, I swiftly incorporated his more recent cartoon appearance on a certain cat food commercial. Going back to the KISS-inspired makeup from “Let Me Entertain You”, the montage was topped off with the skin-stripping coda to the “Rock DJ” video. Looping that segment through the projector’s tinny speaker was sufficient to get everyone’s toes tapping – whether they wanted to or not.

Sourcing the elements in short notice was a challenge within itself, necessitating some quick thinking across many resources and creating new ones on the fly. But for a dabble it did the job nicely – despite a few imperfect keystone masks and off-centre aspects.

Although my studies and assessment focus on mastering Green Hippo media servers, I took the opportunity to try something different. Cracking open the case for the first time on our prized Troikatronix Isadora server, I soon found myself a quick learner.

Green Hippo has a warm, organic user interface that sometimes seems counter-intuitive despite its obvious power. Isadora presents a more familiar building-block style of boxes and properties, allowing links to be dragged between outputs and inputs to visualise how everything is hooked up.

My familiarity with node-based workflows such as DaVinci Resolve Fusion, combined with my coding background, made getting to grips with Isadora a cinch. Although I can understand how the blank starting screen can seem intimidating to non-techies.

Although there are likely far more efficient ways to structure my little throw-together, I was able to coax the effect I wanted by combining smaller known sub-processes. This combination of nodes and lines offered mathematical means to make it work where I may have floundered with an artier interface…

… so I guess I’m loving angles instead.

Project Caligari

As the days tolled ever onward to All Hallow’s Eve, an opportunity arose to make use of a new creative space on campus – just by our CentR Stage bar and just in time for the Academy’s Halloween party. Despite only receiving full access and equipment on the morning of festivities, a hastily scribbled tribute to the legacy of cinematic horror was set in motion.

Knowing partygoers were there to chill, chat, and indulge appropriately themed cocktails, there was no expectation they would sit down to watch a full film. Instead we planned a minimalist immersive area to relax in, with low-slung sofas encircled by rear-projected screens showing multiple silent movies. A central plinth would hold an object of focus and contrasting colour from the cold scenes on display.

Implementation demanded a different design – not least a lack of haze, incense, and human remains – with a trio of floor-sat units forward-projecting onto a curve of black drapes. The plinth then sat behind the sofas, adorned with a plastic pumpkin pilfered from the bar – ideally replacing it with the winner of the party’s carving competition.

Vintage horror sourced from archive.org provided the (cunningly Public Domain) vibe, with many films planned for each screen through the night. Technical difficulties, however, meant we had to lock each projector down to a single looping movie – controlled by a laptop behind the curtain running Resolume Media Server going into an HDMI splitter.

The chosen films presented a journey through the early years of macabre movies. An era where the steadfast rules of cinema had yet to be written, inspiring a vibrant visual imagination lost in a later generation of sedate talkies.

The vivid expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) was an essential choice. The first feature-length horror committed to celluloid, and one which many have not been aware. Director Robert Wiene’s eye delivers a pioneering dream-like ambience to a tale of grisly murder, with hand painted backdrops accentuating this unreality.

Next, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – another German Expressionist classic. Despite drawing the ire of the Stoker estate for obvious plagiarism, this film offers its own interpretation. Max Shreck‘s Count Orlak presents an iconic image of vampyric horror as a monstrous being, a presence revisited in subsequent remakes.

Completing the triptych with another tale retold through the generations, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) was filmed with spoken dialogue. However, the rich gothic design still offers strong visual storytelling, with Boris Karloff‘s taciturn performance as the monster just as captivating in silence. A cornerstone of Universal Studios’ shared monster cinematic universe.

All crew work is collective, and we could not have done this without the aid of veterans Nick and Max, who helped to set up and put the final pieces together while I was embroiled in all-day lectures. Their efforts ensured the project was finished to schedule.

Freshers had their chance to contribute too, with new student Ruby curating a masterful multi-genre playlist to accompany proceedings. Although I was obliged to throw in a few extra tracks at the end, we all agreed to remove ‘Monster Mash’ after the shuffle spookily reprised it over and over.

Nothing can ever happen without some form of improvisation, and the taming of wild ideas into practical necessity manifests many happy accidents. The surreal imagery of early experimental cinema, especially in Caligari’s twisted set design, was thrown further off-kilter by the warp of the drapes. An abstract unease accentuated by the imperfect focus and inconsistent framing. It is important, at times, to let go of perfection so things can simply find their own form.

Overall, it went down very well. Partygoers drifted in and out to watch and take photos, enjoying my eager explanations. The client and crew working in the main studio also popped in to take a look around in appreciation. The only complaint from some was the installation wasn’t ‘scary’ enough…

… but the True Terror was throwing it together on time!

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/11/01/project-caligari/

#academyoflivetechnology #caligari #cinema #expressionism #frankenstein #halloween #horror #immersive #nosferatu #projections #resolume #samhain #vintage