Use of Film on Stage

“Crossing the Celluloid Divide” has become one of the main trademarks of a Forkbeard stage show. In its simplest form it is the trick of merging from stage to screen and vice versa. But Forkbeard have taken it to wild and fantastical levels in the years since they first hit upon the technique.
Chris and Tim’s father’s film making and delight in cinematic trickery and illusion that fired our enthusiasm for devising ways of using film in our shows. But cine film was expensive. The digital age was yet to come and you couldn’t project early video: it looked terrible. Unable to afford movie film let alone a camera or projector, the first ‘film’ we showed on stage was a series of 35mm slides projected very fast to humorously create the illusion of a film (‘On and Uncertain Insect’ 1978).
Their first 16mm movie was an animated cartoon called ‘Could a Whale Fly?’ in ‘The Clone Show’ in 1979 with which Tim performed, talking to the cartoon characters. This was Forkbeard’s first ever live interaction with film.

Forkbeard started to use more and more Super 8mm and 16mm cine over the next few years although their first real ‘Crossing The Celluloid Divide’ moment took place in “GHOSTS” in 1985 when the Ghost-Hunter Holcombe Rogus is seen to walk out of the film and onto the stage.

By now they had also started making stand-alone films which they either showed in film theatres, festivals or after their live performances: films like “Night of The Gnat” and “The Bonehunter”.

To present these films they invented the Brittonioni Brothers but, unable to keep up the Italian accents, Chrissy and Timmy soon became the fabulous pompous Brylcremed jet-setting avant-guardistes, more concerned with the cut of their trousers than the cut of their films. The Brittonioni Brothers have taken Forkbeard to festivals across the UK and all over the world since they first donned their mirror-lens shades back in 1985.

The ideas and possibilities for using film have been endless as well as hugely enjoyable to invent and realize.

Crossing the Celluloid Divide

Almost as soon as film was invented in 1895, film-makers began experimenting with tricks and illusions both live and on film in magic theatres and variety acts. Greg Giesekam in his book “Staging the Screen” (Palgrave Macmillan) describes how “..within a decade of the Lumière Brothers exhibiting the first films in Paris in 1895, theatre practitioners were employing film. By 1929 fifteen theatres in Berlin were already fitted with projection facilities. Georges Méliès was the true pioneering creator of cinematic spectacle and the first to use theatrical sets in a film.

Film in Forkbeard’s Stage Shows

GHOSTS (1985)

Total blackout in theatres is something one cannot get nowadays because the EXIT lights are so bright. While of course they are there for safety, the loss of total darkness means one cannot so ompletely ‘possess’ the audience’s imagination in total darkness at the beginning of the show. “GHOSTS” started in pitch black; the sense of place becomes less certain, disorientating the audience. A tiny picture appears showing a man approaching down a hillside towards what is obviously a window. He eventually peers in and can’t see inside, steps back, and then crashes in through the door. A flap crashes down over the window and there is total darkness. A classic start to a ghost story and the first time Forkbeard used film as part of the narrative plotline of a show. A Super 8-projector was back-projecting onto a simple sheet of BP screen.”

The audience sees the Ghost Hunter approach the window from across the fields in film, before he bursts through the door in person.

The room he enters is like a medieval spaceship with the world contained in its middle, and Nothing beyond its bitten-off floorboards. The shutter slams shut and the door is locked. He is trapped, cut off from the outside world. Here he will meet Doormat, the Butler, at present hovering below ten gallons of green jelly.

WHO SHOT THE CAMERAMAN (1986)

The Brittonionis first became seriously entangled in one of their movies during the Murder Mystery Thriller “Who Shot the Cameraman?” An intruder in a Parka anorak inexplicably enters a sequence of action in the film. To everyone’s astonishment Chrissy sticks his head into the film, then steps fully in and chases the intruder off into the distance.

“What we were doing was creating a living dynamic between stage & screen, where the filmed sequences become part of the world on stage into which and out of which the performers can move –from stage to screen and back again… and performers in film or on stage communicate and talk with one another across this Celluloid Divide”.

Film on Stage holds this power to delight because of the illusion of a whole new living dimension, the depth of field it brings to even the smallest stage and the gorgeous sense of suspended disbelief. It’s also been a great way for us to create casts of 100’s and still play all the parts ourselves!

It’s always seemed strange to us that combining film with performance was invented over 100 years ago and yet it’s taken British Theatre so long to embrace it. It’s amusing to read drama critics who trumpet it as NEW. When the wonderful Spanish company La Cubana came over in 1997 with a show using film The Guardian claimed “New Artform Invented!” but it’s been around for years. And nowadays it’s unusual to see a show that doesn’t use film.

MYTH (1986)

In Myth, Tellywoman invaded the ‘Porta-Play-Pak-Extenda Theatre’, a sort of kit-form cardboard set, and proceeded to disrupt the show. Even when switched off & unplugged she still managed to saturate the airwaves. Eventually in the form of the Blue Woman – a 16ft X 10ft inflatable head and torso – she envelops all; and so TV triumphed over the live act.

This show tended towards the idea that television, being such an immediate and persistent presence in everyone’s home, was a dangerous vehicle for creating modern myths. Hence the invention of the cold and persuasive Tellywoman (see YouTube). So, having recently discovered the power of film in shows, we had a small television turned sideways so we could use it for the portrait-shape of her face. This distortion of the screen gave her an eerily hypnotic effect.

ROLLER BLIND (1986)

The Roller Blind is a portable rolling screen device, first used in “Myth” and commandeered by The Brittonionis. A handheld Super 8 projector projects film of a traveller onto a 20 foot-long rolled up painted landscape. The film was shot against a white background with the performer timing his actions to the rolling mythical landscape of pifalls, obstructions and steep hills.

WORK ETHIC (1988)

A mobile computer with inbuilt 8mm projector. The image was projected onto the operator’s face. This show contained a short film called “Boxmanship” (see YouTube) which was projected with the performer providing the live running commentary, made all the more comic by the fact that the film galloped along almost too fast to keep up with. The film was about the box, boxed thinking, boxes used to hide dangerous cargo and a rather dark view of mankind’s tendency to compartmentalize and sort everything onto a remorseless conveyor belt.

Delivering a live ‘running commentary’ to a pre-recorded film is a wonderfully useful and versatile Forkbeard tool and a very successful method of integrating film into the narrative and action of a show. Forkbeard have employed this technique to convey vital and additional information to the audience. If delivered as dialogue this information would be clumsy and time consuming, but condensed and supported by rich visual imagery (employing any combinations of animation, stills, diagrams, scientific footage etc) its importance is highlighted whilst still integrated into the performance.
A portable computer in the disaster movie ‘The End’.
They could, of course, just have used a recorded voice over, and sometimes have, but the sense of urgency generated by the breakneck, helter skelter narration (with all the possibilities of asides, deviations, fluffs and references to the specific venue or to particular members of the audience) to a film that will just plough on and on to its end regardless creates a comic tension that is truly exciting.

The running commentary or documentary film has another function: it entertains by including the audience in the story. They might be given the roles of eminent paleontologists, marketing execs or the glittering guests at a film premiere.

SERIOUS LEAK (1989)

The15-foot De-Spongefier was telescoped through the film screen, lightly spraying the front row. A hole, centre-screen, disguised as a Valve outlet, was precisely aligned with an identical arrangement during the fiming.Like the illusions practised by magicians, real objects were passed or protruded from film to stage and vice versa. A ‘safety hatch’ led into the film. The film itself was (front) projected from the arch onto a mirror and then onto the screen, at this angle the shadows of the performers were much less of a problem.

EXPERIMENT IN CONTRAPROJECTION (1990)

After cutting the paper screen in half (on film) the real Timmy Brittonioni gradually materialises, scrumpling up his own film image, so leaving the paper thin Chrissy still holding up the screen.

By firing Mr Jobling’s projector-beam directly at the monstrous beam of the antique Eisenstein projector, the Brittonionis hope to break down the Celluloid Divide, thus enabling us all to step in and out of our favourite movies mingling with the stars. But it doesn’t quite work out like that. Timmy and Chrissy prepare to fire up the great Eisenstein projector. The shadow sequence could have been real but filming it gave the performers enough time for a costume change. The projector explodes. There’s a blackout. Then Chrissy emerges out of the smoke, burnt and tattered.

INVASION OF THE BLOOPIES (1991)

In this show the often continuous film sequences were projected onto the bulk of the set itself. The film performed a variety of functions and was inextricably entwined into the action. In Bloopies we were exploring a form of total Live-on-Stage-Film Theatre – sometimes it acted as a type of X-RAY, through the walls and into the rooms and corridors beyond, thus, picking up sections of plot off-stage; it enabled ‘cut-aways’ of macabre goings-on in the basement; activities running simultaneously to the action on stage. The film provided close-ups of performers, details of their activities in cupboards, or with Miss Edwards’s anarchic photocopier. Using combinations of animation and live action, dream-figures (like Nanette) could materialize and haunt the protagonists. The central section of the set itself rotated and became the huge turning pages of Grandpa’s book as he brought the whole disturbing tale to a close.

Performer working with 16mm front projection. “Come into the jelly Ron”, Nanette, Ad-Star Giantess, enticed Ron into her pink and wobbling Dream-Topping Bubble-Bath Bloopy-Heaven

Re-using techniques used in the early years of movie making provides endless possibilities. This one was inspired by the old trick of filming actors against a pre-filmed background to save location expenses.

INDIA RUBBER ZOOM LENS (1995)

Leonardo da Vinci commissions The Brittonionis to find a Zoom Lens for his Time Ship. It has to be powerful enough to project into Eternity. Among the vital increments on the lensmount was not only the Moebius Loop for Infinity but, a notch further up, the ancient Hindustani symbol for Eternity.

“If Leonardo had built a time machine it is quite likely to have been a form of ship and I was attracted by the idea of a very large fan-shaped sail being a film screen. I built the ship structure onto springs so it could sway back and forth. With film of a high sea projected onto the billowing sails, the journey started.”
Penny Saunders from ‘Collaborations’ catalogue.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHERETTES (1996)

In the 1890s crowds flocked to tiny custom-built picture houses to see these magical liquid apparitions.But rumours abounded of escaped liquid film stars, addictions to its heady chemical side effects, mass disappearances and so on.The three doomy Usherette sisters pump up an inflatable arch from which is hung a crumpled screen. Coated in luminous paint the crinkly surface glows weirdly in the light of an ultra-violet light secreted in the box from which it has mushroomed. Across the filthy brackish tarn, on grainy film, a figure approaches the melancholy façade of The House of Usherettes.

The tale of a crusty old picture palace and a long defunct celluloid mixture called Liquid Film.

There are numerous references to films and film music.

“The film shows Méliès in a laboratory. He places a duplicate of his own head on the table, and then sets about inflating it, using a giant pair of bellows. His foolish assistant takes over, and energetically pumps so that the head grows and grows, grimacing and protesting all the time, until it finally bursts. The effect was achieved by means of a little carriage, on which Méliès was moved towards the camera to produce the effect of the enlargement of the head. The disembodied head was then superimposed by double exposure upon the black reserve in the centre of the scene of Méliès’ laboratory”. This inspired a scene towards the end of the show when Lilyhair is punished by his sister Lucy for trying to escape from the film by having his head pumped up, using a 6 ft. weather balloon onto which a gradually growing film image of Lilyhair’s head is front projected.
From “George Melies, Father of Film Fantasy” by David Robinson (BFI Publications) describing Melie’s film ‘L’Homme a la Tete de Caoutchouc’

SET, SCREENS & PROJECTORS USED IN THE SHOW

The basic set, a 4-sided platform with one end much wider than the other. At the wide end was a 7 foot high screen on which the main events were shown, at the other was a powerful 16mm cine projector with a 10mm lens- (i.e. very wide angle). The platform rotated on rings (pink) that allowed a power cable to the central point where there was a slip ring that fed a 240-v supply to a rotating socket for the projectors on the platform. Also on the platform was a stack of 3 16mm projectors that gave a conjoined image onto Side 2 (the consequence sequence mentioned earlier).

S I D E 2 The set for ‘The Lab’ – where films were processed. It was divided into 3 parts all of which were sites for projection: On the right was an old stone sink in which Lilyhair meets his end while his head is pumped up until it bursts. In the centre of is the 3-part screen that shows Nancy metamorphosing into a monster (using 3 projectors sychronised to project the 3 parts of Nancy her head, waist and legs.
 On the left was a paper screen that showed Earlobe escaping a loop he had been trapped in by swinging out on one of Deirdre’s hairs caught in the ‘gate’ of the projector. He fially bursts through the paper screen and his own film image.
S I D E 1 ‘Lilyhair’s Bedroom’ with a vertical bed, a working doorway (onto which a loop of a bank manager trapped in one of the Usherettes’ fiendish film loops is also projected). The stack of 3 projectors was visible through this side.
Both S I D E 1 and S I D E 2 were hinged onto the front screen. Both had a wheel at the other end that allowed them to roll with the set as it rotated, but could also be opened out independently from the platform.
Along the front of the stage were 4 x 16-mil projectors, they supplied the films of: 1. Earlobe trapped in his Loop 2. Animation film of The Galloping Daemon of Time…projected onto the whole set as it rotated. 3. ‘Scratch’ animation film for Nancy as the monster. 4. Lilhair’s face getting bigger and bigger on the balloon.

For the entrapment of Earlobe in the cellar the SET WAS OPENED OUT so that the interior of its structure showed the film store, a huge bottle of bromide (which was actually the back of the stone sink) and the main screen in the centre showed Earlobe in the cellar. So this was now being front projected, whereas up to now images on this screen had been back projected.

THE BARBERS OF SURREAL (1998)

“The plot draws on the extremes to which people go to mould their appearance, pandered to by the cosmetics industry. Its barbershop location derives from the historic association of barbers with medicine and surgery as well as cosmetic experimentation.” Greg Giesekam writing of ‘Barbers’ in Western European Stages 2003.

The 100 year old Alice peers through at Salvador as he closes up shop. Later that night she climbs through the window, crosses the shop floor and re-enters her childhood Looking Glass. This required 3 projectors to be exactly synchronised. The first being the window; the second a big front projection of Alice crossing the shop floor; the third Alice in the mirror world.

The window looked out onto a town square. Passers by would occasionally come into the barbershop and exit after a spell on stage. This coming and going from the film meant that the stage action had to be timed exactly to a film sequence lasting up to 35 minutes.

The film reflection is back-projected onto the mirror-like screen the performers look up at to allow for audience sightlines. The ‘misting-up’ effect disguises the projector being switched on and off. When the film/mirror was not active the ‘alive’ mirror illusion was retained by a flickery shadow effect (the heat of a low voltage light bulb wafting a scrap of foil about). The screen itself is stressed to look like an ancient mirror.

THE BRAIN (1999)

One of the The Wellcome Trust’s first, Science on Stage & Screen Awards. In this show we combined our cinema trickery with the added explosive effect of intelligent lighting from Vari-lite, a battery of moving lights and spinning gobos which acted very much like moving projectors swinging about and firing off onto different parts of the set, in order to mimic the brain’s electrical charges and firing dendrites.

The mind-boggling Dual Brain Theory used two synchronized 16mm projectors on two spring-loaded pull-out blinds. Chris was the middleman stuck between left and right side of the brain lobes.

FRANKENSTEIN A Truly Monstrous Experiment (2001)

This (a co-production with The Bristol Old Vic and The Lyric Hammersmith) was the very first show in which we started using Digital Projection – as well as 16mm cine film. Digital technology had so improved by this time that we were able to use a very powerful high lumen projector placed at the back of the auditorium… but still used 16mm projectors on the stage.

Percy Byshe Shelley pontificates about poetry with a filmed Lord Byron

SHOOTING SHAKESPEARE (2004)

Commissioned by The Bath Shakespeare Festival for The Bath Theatre Royal, Shooting Shakespeare again involved Digital Projectors, this time running off Mac computers in the auditorium …and 16mm on stage. The piece was entirely about Film, about the arrival of Early Cinema and the confusion it created in The Old Queen Theatre of the day. Above all it was about a challenge to make a Silent film version of The Tempest (sound on film was still decades away in the 1890s). We were greatly assisted on this project by film archivist Bryony Dixon from the BFI.

Because we used film a lot during this show, the set was simple, pale and designed for light effects projected onto it. For instance there are three islands (flattish rumpled-fabric pointy shapes) these were caught by side light which exaggerated the texture of the wrinkles, this texture then interacted with film projected onto them from in front. At other times film of the islands was projected onto them as they moved giving a sort of ‘transparent’ effect. Because the islands were on wheels they could also be positioned into tight focus as for example when animations were projected onto them from 16mil projectors on the stage – at the same time the whole set was covered with a large image from the digital projector at the back of the audience.

ROUGH MAGYCK (2006)

Commissioned by the RSC for The Complete Works Festival this was a perambulatory piece which ended up on the main stage of The Royal Shakespeare Theatre. “The story-line was inspired by the impending refurbishment of the RST, which would take place after the Festival. We came up with the idea of a startling discovery of an intricate network of ancient tunnels threading beneath the Theatre. 

Coinciding with this highly controversial discovery, The Brittonioni Brothers have come to The Complete Works Festival to give a lecture on The Death of Magic and the advent of The Age of Reason connecting Prospero’s abjuration of his Rough Magyck with the renunciation of the old pagan belief systems rife in Shakespeare’s England of the time. And then Prospero’s Book comes shooting out of the sea from where Prospero hurled it 500 years ago…. Straight into the Brittonioni’s hands…. and out of the RST’s tunnels pour the suppressed Faerie host led by the Great God Pan himself.”

INVISIBLE BONFIRES (2007)

Multiple projections were used again both from the auditorium and on stage using DV tapes, film run off Final Cut Pro on Mac computers, 16mm and even VHS. Another FF first was a 3D Sequence…the whole audience issued with 3D specs and asked to put them on while we explored the Undersea World.

Chrissy and Timmy pull themselves together.
Professor Petersen reveals shoals of “intelligent” hypodermic syringes.

THE COLOUR OF NONSENSE (2010)

Splash, Line and Scuro (the three artists in whose Studio the show is set) operate all the sound and projections from their desks. Most of the films are stored on memory cards, in digital media players, connected to digital projectors. These projections are triggered instantly, at the press of a button, by the performers, spot cues they can decide for themselves. The digital projectors are built into the performer’s desks or disguised in cigar boxes in the set. This technology is a wonderful new departure for FF live shows, dispensing with numerous tape or DVD decks, cables and computers. Its also ideal for our interactive museum & gallery exhibits. But Forkbeard can never desert old stuff entirely. There are two Overhead projectors, sources of coloured light and transparent drawings; and the scratchy, splashy opening titles are 16mm film.