In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats; from choreographing the journey of the user’s experience, to 1980’s Rave Scenes. Working with the Actors to shape their bodies using photogrammetry to staging realistic scenes for the user to move around and within.
‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’, a Cinematic immersive VR experience, takes audiences on a multi-sensory joyride into the past, bringing to life the stories of the promoters, police officers, and rave-goers, whose rivalries and relationships drove a revolution in music and society. Multi-sensory room-scale interactive VR enables participants to feel the anticipation, trepidation, excitement, and euphoria that was Acid House. Created by Darren Emerson and East City Films.
There were three key elements to my involvement as Movement Director for ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’, I would love to walk you through them and offer you a glimpse into the creative process.
Choreographing the user’s journey: guiding movement in a virtual rave experience
Working alongside Darren Emerson (Creator & Creative Director) and Dan Tucker (Producer) in pre-production we started to explore the physical journey of the User’s experience. I began to loosely choreograph the viewers step by step journey within the immersive world, using the floor, creating a floor plan and adding string to mark out the pathways of the soon to be participants. We wanted to ensure that the user travelled within the space functionally, creatively and safely. The floorplan was crucial, so as not to make the user feel dizzy nor disoriented whilst in the headset, whilst at the same time offering them an interesting immersive and creative experience. The use of space plays an extremely important role in the user’s journey, we are quite literally moving the user in two worlds, the real, actual world and within the virtual world – not as easy as it may seem to bridge the two worlds seamlessly, a creative and practical challenge.
This is a part of choreography and movement direction that never gets seen, but is repeated again and again and again with each user’s experience. Little do the participants know, they have been choreographed – every step of their experience. This journey through the literal space, done well, literally enhances the user’s experience in the virtual space. The user is not thinking about where they are in literal space, as they are fully immersed in the virtual, whilst moving around the actual space safely and with choregraphed creative intention. If the floor plan of the user’s journey was not thought out properly nor their movement experience considered, this could potentially lessen the overall user’s experience. Through careful choreographed consideration, we wanted the audience to move quite literally, to be moved and taken from naturalistic movement to dance guiding them through their own euphoric physical journey.
Embracing spontaneity: how improvised play shaped movement direction
Again in pre-production, Darren, Dan and I had such fun in improvisation, being the ravers. The task was to create a series of still moments, shaping the characters in various scenes and scenarios. Through improvisation and play, it allowed us to ask and answer many questions and for me to see what shapes and poses for the characters would potentially fit and work well for this creative project. We initially explored the scene in the bedroom where the three ravers are getting ready to go out. How would they sit, stand, embody, posture – what would they be doing? How would the night unfold and how would this influence their body language? How would the three ravers/characters interact and share the space, what would they be doing individually and together? Darren had an initial loose storyboard, but it was through improvised play, that really brought the 3d vision to life. Nostalgia and reminiscing our youth was definitely part of the creative process.
We explored actions such as getting ready, playing cards, drinking, painting nails, choosing a record, listening to music, laughing at a joke or story, reading a flyer, building the animation of conversation after a few drinks. Once we found the key actions, I was able to explore the detail of the poses in more depth. noting what still poses worked for each character and which drove the story and relationships between the characters forward. Lots of pictures were taken as you can imagine for visual reference. We were slowly beginning to curate the scene that the user interacts with within the virtual world.
We worked through each of the scenes in a similar way, the bedroom scene, car scene, petrol station scene, police station etc. Finding poses, still postural shapes, sight lines, facial expressions … that really worked to capture in stillness a full moment, tone and feeling of the overall scene. These poses were then noted to be used later with the actors within the photogrammetry studio, a 3d capturing method. Each actor was captured separately, so I had to pose and shape the actors with intricate precision to enable the full story to make sense when all of the bodies/characters were composited together in the finalised scene.
Physical aspects and nuances that were considered for each character included: posture, weight distribution, body organisation, facial expressions, the internal thoughts, subtext, feelings of each character in that precise moment, sight lines, gestures and even zooming into the tiniest details of the fingers and face. Photogrammetry captures in 3d, 360 degrees and highlights every single feature in such detail – nothing is hidden. Some aspects can be tweaked in post by the VFX team, but I believe in working to the best that I possibly can to get the precision needed in production, to assist as much as possible, the workflow for the VFX team in post.
Each pose needed intention and energy for the subtext and character to fully emerge and be realised in a still frame, so as the viewer believes and is fully immersed in that moment, This was a great creative challenge for me as a performance director and for the actor. How can we tell the intended story about movement, through a still image?
Rave revival: reimagining 80s vibes for a digital dance-floor
As well as choreographing the audience and staging the ravers and the police, my third task was to work with two dancers to choreograph and direct a crowd of 80’s rave dancers with varying dance sequences, authentic to the time. I got to work with two phenomenal performers Phoebe Hyder and Edmund Wood, who I have worked with extensively before. I brought them in as they were both perfect for this creative project – great movers and fully appreciated the complexities of working in a digital world.
There was an extensive research component to this task; watching, observing and noting authentic footage of rave scenes and dancers in the 80’s. I observed the moves, the shapes, the beats, the size of the moves, quality, rhythms -it was such a fun process!. We looked at and then recreated the motions; the body, the breath, shapes, gestures, rhythms, timings, repetitive actions, sequences, gestures and even facial expressions. Facial expressions were not being captured in these particular scenes, but we still needed to focus on them, as what the face does directly impacts how the body responds and the body, breath, face and thoughts all ripple throughout the whole of the embodiment and consequently the final capturing.
Darren curated many clips for us to watch and created a music playlist that captured the essence of the time and specifics to the 80’s Coventry rave scene. This along with our own research enabled us to really delve deep into the world, the moves, the music and of course the repetitive beats.
On set on the capturing day, we brought the moves to life through Motion Capture, exploring many variations of the dance style and ways of moving and embodying the ravers of that time. Even though we were in Motion Capture suits, we even thought about what these ravers would have been wearing, on their body, their heads, their feet and how this would have had an influence on their behaviour and moves also.
On the day we explored the scale of the movements and how these moves could be made smaller and larger, playing with a wide spectrum of dance sequences. This gave us lots of options and movement variables to record and capture for the VR developers to use in post-production. Ed and Phoebe were great, shifting and shaping to the beats, such troupers, we had an extremely fun day on set.
We captured the dancers, ravers, even the DJ, the characters on their ecstasy highs and their come down lows – the body and the movements, capturing all of the varied energetic states. We were definitely vibing on the virtual dance floor.
The whole team of ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ were phenomenal and the virtual rave immersive experience is still on the move. Originally funded by the BFI and Coventry City of Culture Trust, ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ had its world premiere during the Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, receiving critical acclaim and sell-out audiences. Following this “Beats” has toured internationally, captivating audiences at festivals such as BFI London Film Festival, South by Southwest, Melbourne International Film Festival, IDFA Amsterdam, and Geneva International Film Festival.
The creative team has ensured that “In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats” is fully accessible to all audiences. The experience includes a seated version for wheelchair users, subtitles, haptics (vibration), access packs, VR explainer, scene descriptions, and a touch tour for d/Deaf audiences. In partnership with Woojer, haptic vests will enhance the multi-sensory journey, making it inclusive for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
Next stop for IPORB is an 18-month UK tour. Rave on, grab your 80’s gear and go catch those Beats! We look forward to seeing you on the Virtual Dance Floor!
To read more and to catch the tour visit: In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats — East City Films
Visit the In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats credit page for further details and do check out more of my Behind the Scenes; Stories of a Movement Coach articles, feel free to sign up here to be the first to hear about my latest news, industry thoughts and behind the scenes insights.
