Peak Signal Case Study Audience of the Future Dream Demonstrator
EM Williams Dream © RSC Photographer Stuart Martin
Peak Signal worked with the Audience of the Future team to deliver "Dream", a ground-breaking, compelling and highly accessible interactive theatrical experience to a theatre audience at home. It was an extraordinary exploration into the future of live performance - combining theatre, music, synthetic environments, the latest streaming technology and audience-interactivity.
Onsite at Portsmouth Guildhall © RSC Photographer Stuart Martin
“
It was wonderful to work with such a talented group of creative experts, and for our team to play a role in making such a ground-breaking theatrical experience accessible to a streaming audience.
Sarah Ellis Director Of Digital Development at Royal Shakespeare Company
Dream was an ambitious project that presented some unique challenges. Peak Signal were a key part of the project team and rose to the challenges set for them, and contributed meaningfully to the audience experience.
Peak Signal were engaged by the Royal Shakespeare Company when it was decided that Dream's interactive performances were going to be streamed to viewers over the Internet. Peak Signal helped the project team to capture their requirements, assist with make and buy decisions, quality assurance processes and ultimately played a role in implementing and operating the platform that successfully distributed ground- breaking interactive performances to a global audience. It was a privilege to work with the RSC and the broader Audience of the Future consortium.
KEY CHALLENGES TO ADDRESS The design, build and operation an event-based streaming platform Provide low latency streaming to support interactivity (<5 seconds) Integrate a remote live closed-captioning workflow Provide quality assurance of a custom, interactive OTT platform
Julian Shutt Peak Signal
OUTCOMES
ACTIVITIES
Peak Signal delivered a Statement of Work that included, Bridging the gap between the different ways of working in theatre and in broadcast Collating requirements from production, accessibility, technical and marketing teams Engaging with service providers and technology vendors on the customer's behalf Providing Solutions Architecture, design and costing for encoding, live captioning, monitoring and control Providing Solutions Architecture, design and costing for distribution alternatives Proving concepts and supporting the team to select the approach that met the production's needs Building and testing reusable on-premise encoding, live captioning and monitoring systems Building and testing a reusable cloud system, its associated orchestration flow and CI/CD processes Preparing automated and user quality assurance and load test plans Preparing operational contingency plans Operating streaming events, administering both on-premise and cloud streaming systems Liaison and operational testing with affiliates
The project was successful, All performances were streamed successfully to a total of >100,000 viewers across the planet Passive (free) and interactive (monetized) audience experiences were suppported Performances were delivered to affiliate online distribution platforms Collateral, learnings and a knowledge library have been documented for future live events An orchestrated, multi-environment, monitored cloud-based streaming platform for re-use A repeatable, event-based remote live closed-captioning workflow
Susannah Clapp 21 March 2021, The Guardian
Alexis Soloski 17 March 2021, The New York Times
… it suggests a new arrow for the quiver of live theatre
… an obviously fruitful and seemingly happy collaboration among top-of-their-game actors, directors, designers, composers and technicians
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2021