As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the likes of theatres, concert halls and event venues remain firmly shut. It was extremely exciting, therefore, when Curve Theatre in Leicester approached us about taking their production of Sunset Boulevard online. We’re not strangers to filming content for theatres. We’ve worked with the likes of Nottingham Playhouse, Derby Theatre, and Curve Theatre in the past to film behind the scenes content, production trailers, TV Adverts, rehearsal films and archive recordings of performances. This though, was something completely different.

 

 

With thanks to the bold decisions of Chris Stafford, Nikolai Foster and the entire team at Curve, it was clear that we had a golden opportunity to use this state of the art space to create some magic. Not quite theatre, not quite film, but a beautiful hybrid of the two artforms, allowing Curve to reach new audiences all over the world. 

As something entirely different, we had to be flexible with our roles and play to our strengths to ensure we produced something of excellence for the theatre. With Jordan as our in-house director being extremely experienced not only with working with actors but also with the technical aspects of production, he took on the role of Director of Photography. We knew that Jordan would not be there to direct, but would be there to advise Nikolai, the production’s director of how the production could be staged for the cameras as opposed to a live audience. Jordan and the team of camera operators spent 4 days in rehearsals, working out a shooting script, choreographing the gimbal and advising the wider creative team.

We had a large team of freelancers including Francesca Costa, Lauren Taylor and Lauren Pester on cameras, Dan Hunt operating a crane and Mbili Munthali on the gimbal. Duncan took on the role of AC, assisting the entire camera department throughout the production and Dan took on the role of producer for the project – liaising directly with the theatre, ensuring logistics were adequately planned and executed as well as assisting Duncan and the theatre’s technical team to install and route the cameras to a central gallery. 

Covid safety was paramount, and as well as daily health declarations and temperature checks, the whole company adhered to social distancing measures, face coverings and covid testing whilst on site. 

The final product was shot ‘as live’ – we had two attempts at the production and we chose just one to take forward into the edit. The tight turnaround on the project gave us just 4 days to complete the edit before it was streamed out for the opening night. To hit the deadline, Dan produced an assembly edit overnight after the final day of production, before Duncan took over on the main edit with Nikolai on the subsequent days. 

We were really thrilled with the feedback we received from audience members. It was amazing to see comments flooding in on Twitter over the course of the 5 weeks the production streamed for. 82 performances were streamed in total, with the production being seen in 45 countries by nearly 15,000 people. 

It was an absolute honour to work with such an amazing group of talented people and we’re so excited to returning to Curve to assist with bringing The Color Purple to screen in a similar fashion.

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Photos courtesy of Marc Brenner