Production of "Closer"

[James C]

I'm working on "Closer" at the moment (the one with the film-version that's doing the rounds of Award-ceremonies at the moment.

 

Too late to be of any use to me now, but I wondered if anyone knew how the chatroom scene had been done before. Two actors onstage, in different locations, meet in a chatroom, and have a conversation with very specific text. The text is projected above their heads for the audience. We're using a powerpoint presentation, with each line added to a new slide - it does a job, nbut isn't that satisfactory. Anyone done this before? (Couldn't afford an accurate typist to do it live every night!)

[peternewman]

I probably would have written a little program to display it on screen, or maybe even interfaced it to MSN Messenger or something, but then thats just the sort of person I am :huh:.

 

Couldn't you use the letter at a time feature of Powerpoint to simulate typing?

 

PN

[JCoster]

You could have used Bluetooth keyboards with the actors really typing. If they made mistakes, it would improve realism in some ways. Just hang two projectors from the ceiling, one for each computer screen, and you could have really been using MSN, which again would improve realism of the online web chat (with people signing in every so often :huh:).

[the kid]

Im not sure if it possible but theres loads of java chats about you could try one of those.

[Lee Brennan]

Used the format of powerpoint for a chat room - with the typing effect in animation - which proved to be faultless a during production I worked on. The benefit was that you knew what you were going to get every performance, i.e. no typing errors / it didn't require an extra person (which always helps the production manager)

 

Adding in the extras (people signing in - as on MSN) etc. is still possible if you add it on your slides.

 

Just a word of advice - remember if there is a clock (we dumped the screen onto the slide) to keep changing the time - after the first tech rehearsal this was pointed out which in return meant someone going through every slide to correct it - bit of a ball ache during production week - but hey ho!

 

Hope this helps

 

Lee

[James C]

yup - using letter-at-a-time, but still not ideal, as once you've clicked for the next line, you can't stop/slow it down mid-flow. As for Bluetooth, Not sure I'd trust the technology in a live setting (much a I cherish my BT handsfree in the car, at least if it loses the connection, peole don't ask for a ticket-price refund!), and the script is so precisely written, that each mis-spelling in the original text is intended to be replicated just so, so more mistyping by the actors wouldn't be appropriate.

 

Just wondered if anyone else had done the show, as I gather a fair few regional reps have put it on since the National did it in '97.

[JCoster]

Yeah, I admit that the loss of connectivity is a big problem with Bluetooth mice and keyboards yet it's always worth a try.

[Modge]

When we did it a lampie-geek (not this one!- I wasn't that involed) knocked up a program which had a big memo box in the centre of the screen which displayed the next line from a text file when you pressed space so we just typed out the relevant bit of script. Shouldn't take your local friendly geek more than an hour (less if you have an fast geek) to code it up in Delphi \ VB (much as I hate recommending VB for anything).

[PDD]

yup - using letter-at-a-time, but still not ideal, as once you've clicked for the next line, you can't stop/slow it down mid-flow.

 

The only problem with "letter-at-a-time" effect on PP is that in the few chatrooms I've seen you don't actually see the other person typing as they go, only the resultant message after they've pressed send. We were considering a similar effect and this was pointed out rightly, so we dispensed with the "letter-at-a-time" and just did a line at a time with it gradually filling the screen then scrolling off the top, which was just faked by deleting the first line each slide.

 

I guess it depends how realistic you want to be, but I always trust in that suspension of disbelief thing. P.

[JCoster]

Yeah, but surely you'd see the person typing's letters appear above their heads.

[Modge]

we actaully seriously considered (not sure why we didn't do it) making setting up our own irc channel and running mIRC on the project machine then having a script pump lines at it. That would cut it for realism - assuming that they use IRC in the play (never got as far as seeing it though)

[Lee Brennan]

Ok this is in reply to the earlier post by rugby-tech - sorry I can't work out how to add a quote into an edit of a post.

 

Here goes (it's been one of those days)

 

When a typist is typing on a chatroom they can see what theyare typing themselves (as you would with the typing animation)

 

[how many variations of the word type can you fit in one sentence???]

 

If you used two projectors, and two PP presentations, one for each actor, the character typing would use the animation function, when the enter/send button is pressed both slides change and the receiver only gets the text which has been typed and then vise versa for the reply. Which would make it easier for the audience to understand who is typing at the time and also be realistic.

 

Just an idea.

 

Lee

[PDD]

When a typist is typing on a chatroom they can see what theyare typing themselves (as you would with the typing animation)

 

If you used two projectors, and two PP presentations...

 

Ah yes. Good point.

[P. Funk]

Find the best typist(s) you can, and then use some screen capture program to record a video of the typing. Pause it between each line in teh production, and sorted!

[lightbulb789]

I like the idea alot of using Msn Messenger, because then you can bring it up to date and show even more how realistic it is by using a Webcam for each computer.