The process to make a music video at Alley Catz Club involves a fair number of steps that often take several months to implement from conception to reveal ready. Total hours of time is often 100+ hours depending on complexity of the theme. A lot of this time is spent making subtle changes to the eventlist and then playing the track while watching the eventlist to ensure timing is correct. Infact, I would say more time goes into this task than any other.
Step 1: Is to come up with a stage theme idea and then develop the vision for that idea around a given song, often the song dictates the theme.
Step 2: Is to source props and purchase or build them, this is something that tends to occur over several months based on the list of potential ideas or from creators that we know sell the kind of props we are after.
Step 3: Is to obviously slot the theme into the Club schedule, often the decision of what idea will be used for the next theme may result in deferring others especially if its a high complexity build or JP has to learn a new song.
Step 4: Is when the real work starts, to then build the stage theme. Often themes also require the building and texturing of custom props or projectors that we make too provide the base of the theme. This process takes several hours over a period of 3 – 5 days to complete. During the build we lock down access to the Club until the current state is loaded into a performance engine so it can be DE-REZZED as we still need to ensure the theme is not seen until reveal.
Step 5: Once the base is built, prop placement is done, generally this is the quickest step. It can take anything from 1 hour through several hours.
Step 6: If we intend to have prop movement as part of the theme this adds further complexity as movers need to be rezzed to be the root prims for the props and waypoints need to be created.
Step 7: Is to work out the movement path for JP and then build that path with a mover adding all the required waypoints. As part of this process we create keypoint objects that are added to the engine. These are only required for this step through 8, then they are discarded. These key points are generally focus points for the places JP will pause, change direction or have a special camera movement as part of the overall performance.
I use a separate engine for each song, there are two technical reasons I do it this way. (1) I DO NOT want my Choreo HUD when connected to the house Dance Pad’s to impact the animations played as part of the eventlist for JP when he is on a mover. (2) The dance pads I use are not just the standard dance pads that come with the Dance HUD, I have added the MST Immersive Theatre scripts & NC to each pad as this is what enables an individuals camera to be controlled as part of the eventlist. Anyone reading this who uses MST Tools, you cannot do this with the grouped dance pads, each dance pad must be its own unique pad with all the scripts in it. I don’t think its documented on the MST website how you do this simply due to the fact that most Immersive Theatre shows consist of a performance with patrons sitting on chairs which DO NOT have the Dance HUD scripts in them.
Step 8: Building the eventlist in the engine, now that we have all the way points. It is now a matter of working each waypoints move time & speed.
Step 9: Add specific lighting and effects into the performance, on average this takes 2 hours depending on complexity, even longer if I am programing a timed program for a given song within an a Aurora system.
At this point, we could say we are done and simply use a fixed full stage camera view for the machimna and allow those present at a reveal control their own camera. This is not the case when we do Steps 6 – 8, we also do one final step that provides a full immersive experience with camera movement.
Step 10: This is often the most difficult of them all as it is during this step everything comes together. Alone this step takes on average a good 20+hours to set all the camera waypoints. Often extra camera’s need to be added & waypoints adjusted during this process to bend around objects and/or props when they become visable during a test run of the event.
During any show that we run a theme song, people are informed that the show will include an immersive experience and are given ample warning of when they need be seated on a dance pad. When sitting they need to accept the invite and then reset their camera by pressing ESC a few times till it snaps into the start position which is generally a view of the stage either from the back or middle of the clubs dance floor. The key here is to not touch your camera controls until the end of the performance as this will override the engine, if one does take back camera control by accident, simply press ESC a few times till is snaps back under control of the Engine.
JPeabody - Singer | Alley Catz Club - Ascension Media & Lighting 