Dear Stuart,
Live streaming with an audience is something you may want to build up to versus start out with. Recording live is another issue, but again, unless you're using a multi-camera shoot what are you showing your audience other than one person's perspective from a seat in you theater, usually in a wide shot that is neither set for stage lighting temperatures or color schemes. If your school has a video/film program, having them shoot as a three-camera production and editing it would better serve you. This way you can have varying shoots make it more visually stimulating. You're then looking at streaming on one of the many streaming sites -- some of the HS ticketing companies have set up streaming capability through their platforms, so check with whomever you do ticketing through --- and I can assure you. they will have suggestions that work best through their services.
As for an audience, that's all about the safety precautions you can set in place and the risk you're willing to take; make sure to check with your admin and review your District's current policy, which will change as the health crisis does.
Remember to stream live (and doing it well) with kids is asking them to broadcast live television without that experience and on a source (streaming) that is not stable. There's plenty of other options that provide the end result of getting the work out there for the public to see. Just my two cents.
Regards,
Joe
Joseph D'Aquino
Newport Harbor High School
Drama Department Program Director
Original Message:
Sent: 8/28/2020 6:47:00 PM
From: Stuart Rosenthal
Subject: Online performance with "live" audience?
Hello all - Our school is doing the distance learning (Zoom) thing for at least the first quarter, so our fall production will be rehearsed on Zoom, and performed on Zoom or some other online platform. I'm not yet sure if we'll try to perform live (in real time), or stream a pre-recorded and edited performance (and yes, we'll obtain the proper license to do whichever). My question is this: Is there a way to present an online performance in such a way that the audience is actually "present"? My worry is that having the actors perform into a black hole with no response whatever will be disheartening (kind of like comics performing their shtick into a silent camera with no feedback - really difficult and depressing!). We'll be looking for an online platform where we can sell tickets to live/streamed performances (i.e. people buy a ticket to see the show on a certain date at a certain time), but do any of them permit the audience to be audible (at least) to the actors? I think it would lovely if the actors could hear their audience laugh at the dialogue, and applaud when it's time. On the other hand, we would *not* want to hear audience members chatting or commenting to their companions. What do you think? Is there a way to do this, or should we even try?
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Stuart Rosenthal
Director of Fine & Performing Arts
Miami FL
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