Press Release from MOD Productions
Conceived and directed by media artist, Michela Ledwidge and produced by Mish Sparks and Cristina Dio, the shoot captured images and audio in high fidelity to be used in "The Virtual Orchestra", an immersive interactive 3D installation that will tour around the globe. It will allow people to experience being surrounded by the ACO's virtuoso musicians as they perform beautiful music on their unique and precious instruments.
"It was so exciting to see such exquisite performances come to life on set", said Michela Ledwidge. "The new formats we’re developing will make this beautiful artform accessible to more people."
"Because an orchestra's process relies on each musician hearing and seeing each other to produce their music, the challenge was to shoot all musicians simultaneously while capturing each one’s audio and video separately", said Mish Sparks.
"We assembled a fantastic team of imaginative professionals able to work with the latest technology", said Cristina Dio.
As the orchestra performed, each musician was individually shot against greenscreen, using a DSLR camera and custom-built stereo mirror rig. To handle and quality check the amount of data recorded for each take, a special web-based asset management tool was developed by Ms Ledwidge.
The project has been in development for over a year, involving extensive R&D and an earlier pilot by MOD Productions and collaborators. The pilot findings are available as a PDF download at http://modprods.com/virtualorchestra
Search hashtag #virtualorchestra for updates
Sample photographs from this week’s shoot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michela/5563421168/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michela/5562847011