The app itself is relatively simple, you can type in some text, hear it as morse code, then use the button to try and repeat what you have just heard. A scrolling timeline displays the morse characters in this final stage as a visual aid to help you keep the spacing correct.

Code for the app is available on GitHub.

A Christmas Carol was performed in the round in St Mark’s Church, Saltney (although practically unrecognisable once we’d hung our blackout curtains!). Use of an iced smoke machine combined with highly saturated stage lighting provided a dramatic backdrop for the shots. None of the photography was staged, it was taken during the final dress rehearsal.

Tasked once again with producing a DVD of the performance, I spent some time carefully planning the shots of each musical number for optimal recording.

With Theatr Clywd’s large stage and auditorium, covering the performance adequately proves a challenge with only a single camera op. Fortunately, the show is performed two consecutive evenings, meaning I could focus the coverage on a single half of the stage each night.

Capturing a 4-camera shoot, consisting of medium close-up, wide, full-stage and auditorium shots, the two tightest shots were captured from the viewing galleries on opposite sides of the auditorium each evening to vary the angles. The two widest shots were recorded both nights as insurance, leaving six truly unique angles in the edit.

During the edit, using Adobe Premiere, each musical number was separated and both evenings aligned in a multi-cam timeline. Each number was then edited independently before being reconstructed into the complete show.

Audio was recorded separately, both directly from the Theatre’s sound console and with ambience mics in the auditorium. These tracks were combined with the video in the multi-cam timeline. Audio levels of each track were normalised to within a close tolerance of broadcast EBU R128.

Twelfth Night, their first show, was held in St Peters Church in the centre of Chester and I was asked to step in and do publicity and show photography during the dress rehearsal.

During a short informal meeting he dreamed up the storyline for the video along with an almost-final script. From this hand-drawn storyboards were drawn and high fidelity storyboards created in illustrator. These were brought back to the director, discussed and alterations made, spanning a couple of weeks.

The voiceover was recorded prior to the final animations, then edited to fit within 30 seconds. Basic background music was also added at this stage.

Once the final animation was locked, the audio was remixed in Logic and a couple of SFX added to fit with the video. This was recombined before the animation exported into deliverables.

During the placement, I was tasked with the planning, organisation, filming and production of the video. After an initial meeting with the CDA team, prior to the placement commencing, it became clear that my initial task was to work alongside the team to orchestrate the generation of ideas and concatenate these into a story for which the video is to portray.

The project began with a long team meeting which focussed on key aspects of the award. I encouraged the team to choose three keywords which could be used to summarise the video. This lead to an in-depth discussion about the key aspects of the CDA award.

During the latter stages of planning, filming opportunities arose in vital scenarios that were necessary to include in the video. While unplanned, these formed a key source of content for the project and it was necessary to take advantage of these opportunities without first having either the time or inspiration to plan the required shots.Amongst these sporadic filming opportunities, the plan continually evolved, with discussions continuing for the script and while the storyline was continually refined.

Within the final few weeks of the placement, and once my supervisor had recovered from her illness, the script was agreed and storyline finalised. At this point my main roles shifted to video production and I worked on encompassing the multitudes of unplanned footage into a coherent and engaging video.This focus continued until the final day of the placement where I presented a final draft version of the video to the staff of the entire department.

I was put in contact with the group who were looking for a DVD to be produced of their annual stage show.

Theatr Clywd’s Anthony Hopkins auditorium has large stage which can prove a challenge when trying adequately cover a performance with only a single camera op. Fortunately, they perform the show two consecutive evenings, allowing the focus of coverage to remain on a single half of the stage each evening.

The edit was equally challenging, abid for different reasons, since the quantity of footage highlighted a read-speed bottleneck on the Hard Disks. Premiere Pro’s multicam timelines were used extensively throughout.

Output of the project was performed through a UK-based duplication house and copies distributed to the cast and crew in the show.

A very small sample of the photos are shown below, with around 400 shots being chosen and touched up for the couple.