Zoom have unleashed a new update to their video conferencing software which will make big changes to the way virtual theatre is produced.
The ‘Immersive View’ feature allows participants in the Zoom call to break from within their individual windows and appear in a unified virtual space. Zoom have included several virtual spaces with the update which can make it look like people are sat together behind desks in a class room, or meeting room, or in a kitchen for example. The technology currently allows up to 25 participants on screen at once.
Whilst this will give people everywhere a sense of being together and will definitely make for some more interesting screen cap zoom selfies, producers of virtual theatre will be particularly interested in what this will now enable and allow in terms of greater immersion of their performers into virtual sets.
A fantastic part of the update is that Zoom allows you to upload your own backgrounds so in theory producers could give the sense that performers are now in any environment and virtual set that their imagination can take them. Of course a still image of a stage or a shop perhaps isn’t going to fool anyone that the performers are actually at these locations, but in terms of suspending disbelief this is still a huge leap above having performers sat in their homes and audiences watch everyone on what looks exactly the same as their zoom call with the aunt and uncle!
The new feature is best if you have a green screen, but just as the virtual backgrounds would work before, Zoom can take out your background and with no borders between participants in means virtual actors have a better sense of being able to act in a scene with one another.
The technology is far from perfect in the tests we here at Extreme Improv Xstreamed have done with it, but it’s early days still. Here’s some initial thoughts form our tests.
For some reason one of our performers who was connecting to the service on a mobile was being displayed in a circular bubble on the screen. The performer had their phone in vertical orientation upon reflection so this may have been the cause, but it was still odd that it should do this without any options to adjust.
We also got reports that the various performers involved had varying experiences with what they would see on the screen. Some saw the virtual zoom set and others just saw a white background. We’re still exploring if this was to do with everyone having the most recent updates or if it was dependant on the device they were using.
Also it was my opinion that whilst the provided virtual sets were functional, they were limited and probably best just for a classroom or casual meeting, and in reality most people will source their own. This includes both every day use for friends/family who will find their favourite options when they play with the new feature and that in most cases virtual theatre producers will use the option to have customised virtual stages.
I noted that I didn’t have full reign to resize everyone as I’d have hoped on the provided virtual sets, but by adding my own I have much more freedom to move anyone anywhere on the screen that I would like, and could resize them as much as I wanted and that performers videos could now overlap.
This feature in particular will allow a director to place characters together or apart from each other to give a sense of intimacy, tension, or emotional distance form each other. This in particular has been missing from virtual theatre since it exploded onto the world out of necessity due to the pandemic.
One challenge that this freeing of borders and barriers now presents to those who create virtual theatre is that audiences had become used to the fact that everyone was in their little boxes, and now that the borders are gone will the audiences still accept where characters now look like they are in the same room but that the actors don’t look to each other and don’t interact physically.
A solution to this would be that performers have their cameras or monitors positioned so that they can see their scene partners on the screen, but have their camera to the side of themselves. This would allow the illusion that the actors are looking at each other (if facing the right way).
This is an imperfect solution as although it would give the illusion that the performers are looking at each other, it is just an illusion. In reality this would require the actor to have the skill to just be lining themselves up to give the impression that they are looking directly at their scene partners in the eyes when they would not be.
Of course, some technically savvy directors and producers out there have been way ahead of this by having their performers have green screens as their virtual backgrounds and then using software like OBS to give the illusion of there being a unified background already. This new tech form Zoom will make this a lot easier however as to create this effect before would take a lot using multiple programmes and effects to achieve the same results. If you wanted to move the performers about the screens it would also require having multiple layers of the zoom call and cutting each performer out and then this can all be messed up if a performer was unexpectantly disconnected or switched their camera off.
My last thought form using the function before and briefly during yesterday’s Extreme Improv Geek Battle Show (which you can see here – we use the function at the start of the show) is that it was no longer possible to spotlight an individual performer and the solution was to just drag and resize them. Other performers could switch their camera off or be dragged to the top of the screen as a kind of wings, but the couple of clicks to put on or two people in the spotlight seems to have been lost for now.
Here at Extreme Improv I try to put a lot of effort into the visual look of a show and use the technology we have to the fullest we can, and this is just another tool which is in it’s early days that I’m sure the virtual theatre community will tinker with and figure out more and more in the coming days, weeks and months. This makes me very excited for what the possibilities will be with the technology in another years’ time and I’m currently working on some new innovations to enhance the Extreme Improv Xstreamed shows which you’ll start to see online over the coming weeks.
It’s an exciting time for virtual theatre and makes performing and shows more accessible for actors and audiences everywhere.
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