Creating and Producing Digital Content
In this Chapter:
Adapting a live performance for digital-only presentation
Creating a hybrid performance
Experience Design
Platform Selection
Onboarding the audience
Recording and creating video content
Adapting a live performance for digital-only presentation
The process of adapting a live performance for a digital-only presentation is very much akin to adapting a theatrical script to a screenplay. It is important to dig into the dramaturgy and themes of the piece and then choose how they will be explored in a digital medium. Some pieces would be best served by a custom interactive event while others might shine when filmed and made available to be streamed online. Once you have an idea of how you might want to present your piece and know why you’re presenting digitally you can move on to ‘experience design’ to hone in on what the event will feel like for your audience.
Creating a hybrid performance
Creating a good hybrid performance can be significantly more work than creating a good in person or digital show as it is in essence doing both of those things at the same time.
Balancing the experience of the in-person and digital audiences requires a lot of forethought and consideration. Eg - it might be best for the digital audience if the cameras were downstage centre, each with their own operator but that then blocks a portion of the in-person audience.
It can be helpful to think of the digital and in-person show as two separate events, each with their own set of goals and desired experience. They don’t have to offer the same thing but they should each be engaging in their own right. Hybrid events usually require more staff to operate as you’ll need at the minimum someone monitoring the online experience.
By no means should this scare you from doing hybrid performances, but rather it should challenge you to push your art and see what you can come up with when faced with multiple vantage points and technologies. Hybrid theatre has the potential to be incredibly fulfilling artistically!
Experience Design
Despite the fact that it’s often left to the end, experience design should be considered from the moment that it’s decided to create a digital or hybrid event. You can think of experience design as curating the journey that an audience member will take from the moment they hear about your show all the way to the point when they leave the theatre or digital space.
Pre & Post show are components that we care about in physical space but that are often neglected in digital space. Think about how jarring it would be if when a show finished all the work-lights snapped on & the sound cut out - that’s the equivalent of ending a stream without any care for digital post show.
Given the expanse of possibilities in terms of experience design, for the sake of this guide we’ll take a look at some customization options available to you for preshow, post show & during your performance and give you questions to ask yourself , rather than telling you how you have to do this work.
Preshow
How do audience members sign up for the show?
Ticketing software, email, ticketing widget embedded on a website?
What material is available to the audience before they sign up for a ticket?
How does the audience receive tickets or links to the event?
When an audience member attends the event how easy is it to find/connect to?
Are passwords needed? Is it a private link? Do they need to download something or use a specific browser?
What does an audience member experience when they attend the event before it starts?
Is there music or some sort of sound playing?
If there is no sound playing, audience members often assume there is something wrong with their system or speakers, or won’t be able to know that something is wrong until the show actually starts, so it’s a good practice to have something playing.
How long is the preshow component active for?
Depending on the complexity of the platform you might need to create some onboarding materials [LINK EXAMPLE] or plan some time/staff to help the audience get used to the platform before the show formally starts.
During the performance
How do you want the audience to experience your content? Do you want them to experience it passively like watching a film? Do you want them to interact with the cast? Other audience members? How much agency do you want them to have over their own experience?
There is a wide range of audience agency that reaches from cannot interact at all, no pausing,all the way to being able to choose what part of the show they see and listen to, interacting with other users or directly affecting the outcome of the show, etc and every permutation in between.
While the interaction between the audience and the cast is not the same in the digital space it does open up new options for audience engagement. Many platforms offer options for chat & it is not difficult to add in voting, various forms of audience input etc.
If you do have chat enabled it is important to consider moderation. Discuss what you consider inappropriate and create a plan on what to do if someone posts something that falls within that category. On most chat platforms you can ban specific words such as hate speech or slurs but you might want to go further in what you allow/block depending on your audience.
If you have chat enabled you should have at least one person assigned to moderation but if you’re anticipating a large audience or opening your event to a wider sector of the internet you might want a team of mods. In this case it is even more important to have a set list of guidelines for your mods to follow
Post show
What happens when the main component of your show finishes?
Is there post show sound?
Is there more content for the audience to experience with?
Are audience members still able to use interaction tools such as the chat or reactions?
What feeling do you want to leave your audience members with? Depending on your show content you might want to give the audience some tools or space to process what they’ve experienced.
What happens to the content after the show finishes? Is the audience able to rewatch sections? Does it continue to live on the internet?
Platform Selection
When you have answers to who your audience is & what you want the experience to be, it's time to choose your platform.
Choosing what platform you’d like your event to be hosted on is a balance between cost (both in money and in labour to create), and audience experience. The landscape of what platforms exist is constantly changing and quite vast so for the sake of this guide we’ll be breaking them down into a few different categories: Video Conferencing, Event Platforms, 2D & 3D Virtual Meeting/Office Spaces, Livestream Platforms & Custom Spaces/Other.
Video Conferencing
Video conferencing platforms allow for 2 way video, audio, chat as well as often polls etc. Usually there is the ability to customize if audience video, audio etc are enabled.
Sometimes allows streaming to another destination or platform
Examples include: zoom, cisco webex, microsoft teams, google meet, VDO ninja*, streamyard*, discord, vimeo livestream studio*, restream studio*.
*Video conferencing is not the primary use of these platforms but they do have that functionality.
Event Platforms
Event platforms tend to be geared to larger events such as symposiums or conferences
Usually a combination of live streaming, ticketing, chat rooms and scheduling
Best for events when you want to have multiple streams contained under one banner.
Examples include: Hopin, Run the World. Crowdcast, Vito, LiveWebinar, Orbits, Blue Jeans
2D & 3D Virtual Meeting/Office Spaces
These spaces offer a high level of audience agency and interaction but can require more unboarding than other platforms.
Audience members are able to move around a virtual space and interact with various elements (graphics, audio, video, other users, games etc)
Often there is some amount of proximity chat built in which allows users to organically cluster and have conversations
Proximity chat means that audience members' audio and video feeds will only connect when they are near each other!
Creates a feeling of being more in a world than some of the other platform types.
Usually quite customizable in terms of graphics and embedded objects.
Examples of 2D spaces include: Gather.town, Topia, Spatial Chat, Go Brunch, Mesh, Spot Maze, vPark, Kumospace, Teamflow and Branch
Examples of 3D spaces include Mozilla Hubs, Pluto, Chudo, VR Chat, altspace VR
Livestream Platforms
Livestream platforms offer a space to send a stream and often have some amount of optional chat functionality built in.
Some livestream platforms allow you to stream directly from them while others require you to stream from another program or space.
Many livestream platforms allow you to embed the stream somewhere else such as a website or other platform.
Examples include: Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Twitter, Dacast, TikTok
Custom Spaces/Other
There is of course a myriad of options to create your event outside of the standard platforms and often the platforms above can be combined to create a unique audience experience.
For example if your event is primarily stream based but you don’t want the audience to feel like they’re on youtube, you could embed a youtube livestream on your own website with only a few lines of code. This already allows the event to be surrounded in your own branding and gives you more control over experience. Most website hosting platforms (like Squarespace, Wix, or Wordpress) have built in widgets for embedding video links
Don’t feel limited by what a platform was originally designed for - look around at what features a platform offers & what you are able to customize. There are often ways to remove branding on Youtube or Vimeo video embeds so the video players have a cleaner look.
Items like chat, streaming, polls etc are often able to be embedded with iframe code - don’t be afraid to mix and match platforms to create the experience that you want.
Examples include Squarespace, ohyay, Twine, Notion
Onboarding the audience
The amount of onboarding required depends on the complexity of the event as well as the general experience level of the audience. Onboarding can be as simple as instructions in an email on how to access the stream and check that the audio is working or as complicated as a full tutorial that audience members are walked through at the start of the event.
When asking audience members to use a platform that’s less commonly used (i.e. most platforms outside of Zoom, Youtube & Vimeo) it can be helpful to include a tutorial in pdf or web format when folks acquire their tickets. This tutorial should include the basics of how an audience member is expected to interact with the platform as well as an email address for any questions.
Depending on what’s expected of the audience it can also be helpful to build an amount of tutorial time at the start of the experience (think of this like the first level of a video game - it still feels like it’s in the same universe as the rest of the game but organically teaches how to use the controls).
With complicated events consider having a staff member available to answer audience questions and help anyone who needs it during the event itself.
Recording and creating video content
It should be noted that many of the following concepts and processes also apply to the act of live streaming a show for a live digital or hybrid performance.
While at its simplest you can stream the unedited footage from a single camera, doing so can feel closer to watching an archival than experiencing a show for the audience. With this in mind we’ll go through a few ways to set yourself up for success when filming digital content.
If you have limited experience working in film, take some time to watch movies that have a similar feeling to your piece and pay attention to what camera shots the cinematographer uses (are they wide shots where you can see some of the location and several characters? Are they closeups? What’s in focus or not? How many people are in frame? Are the shots moving?) as well as the colour, tone, and lighting. Start to compile what you like and what you don’t like in the context of your piece.
Work with your designers & whomever is going to be shooting your piece and start to create a storyboard. You don’t need to be amazing at sketching to create an effective storyboard. Draw out or describe the sequence of shots that you are hoping to capture. This storyboard can be created collaboratively (using tools like Miro, or Jamboard) and will be used extensively through the rest of the process. Side note: storyboards aren’t just for digital performance and can be used in traditional shows as well!
Based on your storyboard create a shot list for what you need to record both visually and auditorily. Your shot list will help you evaluate if you have enough time set aside for filming, and if you don’t you might need to simplify what you’ll shoot. It is important to order your shot list based on what makes the most sense in terms of filming ie. if you have a scene at the start and end of your piece in the same location it would make the most sense to shoot those scenes consecutively instead of chronologically. Or you might want to cluster one actor's scenes all together so that you need them for a shorter period of shooting. Consider that you’ll likely do more than one take of each shot & will need some reset time between takes.
Based on the complexity of the storyboard, create a schedule for the editing process & evaluate if there is enough time to accomplish what you want to do. Something that involves a lot of animation or VFX will obviously take more time in post-production (the period after you’ve recorded all the content, up until the launch of your piece). If you’re already locked into your filming and premiere dates you might need to simplify your vision if there isn’t enough time available.
Your storyboard will also help you create a gear list. There is a wide range of equipment that you can use to create your content - you can even shoot something compelling on a cellphone.
Consider what lensing you might want to use & if you need any forms of stabilization (tripods, gimbals etc) - consider how switching cameras between forms of stabilization takes time.
For those in the Montreal area, Loucam is a great place to rent film equipment from.
Lighting for the camera is different from lighting for the stage. Always make sure to look at the shots through a monitor versus in real life when making lighting adjustments.
At the start of your first day of shooting, go through your filming protocol so that everyone is on the same page in terms of who will call rolling (when the record button on the camera is pressed), slate, action, or cut etc. Having this discussion at the top of the day sets you up for a smoother filming process.
When shooting make sure to slate at the start of each take. This can be as simple as writing the shot name and take number on a piece of paper and then clapping in front of the camera. Slating allows for easier synchronization of audio and video streams when editing.
If you’re shooting in 4k resolution be sure to have spare SD cards &/or a method of quickly dumping files available to you - your cards will run out of space quickly
If you have multiple days of shooting it is best practice to make dailies available to the team at the end of each day for review. A daily is just a compilation of some or all of the material that you recorded during the day so you can be better prepared for the next day of recording
Once you’ve wrapped shooting, the editing process begins. Here are some options for collaborative editing processes and there are a wide variety of paid & free editing options. Depending on the complexity of the edit, special effects, sound etc there might need to be quite a few back and forth drafts with different departments waiting on different aspects.
Editing Suites with Free Tiers:
Paid Editing Suites:
Software for Collaborative Editing:
Adobe Premiere Pro (If all users have paid adobe accounts)
If you want subtitles make sure you leave enough time in your schedule for whoever is doing your subtitles or translation to generate that material after you’re picture locked (once the timing of your edit won’t change but you might still be finishing colour correction/grading, sound mastering etc). Make sure whoever is generating subtitles is producing material in a format that is usable by whatever platform you’re using. For example, here are Youtube’s supported subtitle formats.
Check out what formats your destination of choice prefers in terms of codec and bitrate. Make sure you leave enough time between when you finish editing and when you need it uploaded for rendering (a movie length file with a lot of effects can easily take overnight to render and renders can fail for many reasons). Here are Youtube’s recommended encoding settings.