Theatrical Designers and the Digital Entertainment Space

Hi there! My name is Josh Jeffery and I’m a graduate of SUNY Fredonia’s Department of Theatre and Dance (B.F.A. Scenic Design, ’07). Like Todd (and maybe a bit because of being his student), I’m immensely interested in technology and digital media. After Fredonia, I took a less conventional route with my design degree and decided to enter the Entertainment Technology field. Entertainment Technology is loosely defined as entertainment experiences that are constructed upon or enhanced by technology, such as video games, interactive museum exhibits and theme park attractions. A now-established component of the entertainment field, it is beginning to gain significant recognition as a valid field of study, the first program of which (and where I gained my master’s degree) at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center.

The master’s program at Carnegie Mellon is truly unique; combining fine artists and technologists (like engineers, computer scientists and the like) and putting them in the most stressful of circumstances to rapid-prototype entertainment experiences for real clients. While there, I created virtual worlds where guests can conduct a 3-D fireworks show with their hands in real-time, an interactive exhibit for the Carnegie Science Center hosted by an animatronic R2-D2 and holographic C-3PO (voiced by Anthony Daniels himself!) and created my own project bringing unique cell-phone driven interactions to guests waiting in line at theme parks.

Interestingly, I never had to learn programming and I didn’t give up my skills as a designer to make this stuff. In fact, it’s my training as a scenic designer at Fredonia which enables me to help create all this cool, crazy stuff.

How do interactive museum exhibits, theme park rides or video games relate to theatrical design? It’s simple: entertainment experiences tell stories, and that’s exactly what theatrical designers do best.

Teams throughout the entertainment field are in need of storytellers who are skilled at interpreting character, creating environment and crafting mood as well as working with teams of programmers and engineers to build those experiences. This is nothing new to a theatrical designer, who regularly works with other production staff bringing stories and ideas to tangible fruition. In particular, my training at Fredonia in The Dramatic Imagination class (based on the book of the same name by Robert Edmond Jones) has readied me with a set of tools that make me very valuable on project teams. Engineers and programmers aren’t accustomed to dissecting scripts nor do they usually receive training in color theory or how various materials used in scenery can be utilized to evoke intended moods and atmospheres for guests.

What’s really interesting (and was a real ‘a-ha’ moment for me at Carnegie Mellon) is that the principles and ideas behind theatrical design are just as applicable to virtual environments as they are to real ones. Several of my friends and colleagues now at big game companies like Electronic Arts are ‘level designers’ for various game titles and talk to me about how things like ‘mass’, ‘form’ and ‘space’ are integral for both a fun shoot-em-up level and creating the proper ‘feel’ for a game. Texture artists and modelers in video games are essentially the scenic designers of their genre, many of whom come from fine art programs in illustration or graphic design. Similarly, video game companies even have staff lighting designers, who blend computer engineering with lighting design principles while never touching a real lighting instrument.

This was initially a large element of frustration for me, realizing that a significant portion of my work in this field was virtual and that compared to theatre, there was very little to ‘build’ or put my hands on. I soon realized the end result of a theatrical show and the end result of an entertainment technology experience (if done well) are essentially the same – telling a story to an audience using the tools at your disposal. In theatre, it’s the audience/guest relationship in the magical theatre box with actors, scenery and lighting. In entertainment technology-type experiences, it’s the experience/guest relationship with similar components – sometimes virtual, sometimes tangible, and sometimes a mix of the two. Theme parks and museums are fantastic examples of this, often using elaborate ‘pre-shows’ to immerse a guest in a storyline prior to a ride or main feature.

Theme parks and museums are just a fraction of spaces in which theatrical designers would excel in the digital entertainment space. Listed by Carnegie Mellon as other ‘branches of entertainment technology’, here are just a few other fields in which skills of theatrical designers would make an easy one-to-one transition:

• avatar creation and utilization
• massively multi-player online games
• themed retail, specialty restaurants, and other location-based entertainment venues
• motion-base rides
• console and PC interactive game design
• the creation of unique input devices
• virtual reality utilizing head-mounted displays or other technologies such as CAVES
• massive immersive display environments such as planetaria and Omnimax
• interactive robot animatronics
• synthetic interview technology
• augmented reality
• telepresence for entertainment and education purposes
• digital production and post-production
• sound synthesis, surround sound, 3-D sound, and streaming audio
• entertainment robotics

Technology’s permeation of society has been witnessed in theatrical design and production for years. Computerized lighting boards, servo-driven lighting instruments and multimedia performances are now commonplace. Todd’s blog is a fantastic example of how social media tech can be used as a tool to enhance new techniques and practices in theatre that normally would take years to circulate by word-of-mouth.

What’s really exciting is that it’s now happening the other way ‘round. Technology-driven experiences are now requiring skilled, educated theatrical designers to help assist in the creation of more ‘valid’, rich experiences. The master’s program at Carnegie Mellon requires students to take improvisational acting and attendance to theatrical and musical performances are compulsory. In another part of the program, students are taught (and for thespians, retaught) Aristotle’s Poetics, learning how technology experiences shouldn’t rely solely on spectacle, but instead should take into account plot, character, diction, melody and thought, just as great plays do.

In Janet Murray’s seminal work Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (a fantastic read for any storyteller in the 21st Century), she asserts that the computer and cyberspace are simply tools which offer expanded opportunities for storytelling. As video games, virtual reality and other experiences in the digital entertainment space continue to evolve and grow, these industries will continue to look toward theatrical designers for the ideas and techniques we know have worked telling stories in the theatre for generations. •

Josh Jeffery is a 2007 graduate of SUNY Fredonia’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and is currently the Manager of Web and Digital Media for the Andy Warhol Museum and founder of Evil Genius Designs, Inc., in Pittsburgh, PA.