Shocap Entertainment advances the future of immersive experiences and live VR entertainment
Live-streamed virtual experiences get a boost with industry veterans from Lifelike & Believable and Animatrik, launching Shocap with début production, LiViCi.
Vancouver, CA, September 29, 2020: Today, Shocap Entertainment is proud to formally announce the launch of its company for the immersive experiences sector – the studio aims to reinvent cross-reality entertainment. The company is formed by industry heavy-weights, Brett Ineson from Animatrik, leaders in virtual production and real-time filmmaking for films, games and XR, alongside Athomas Goldberg and Sang Mah from Lifelike & Believable, experts in interactive 3D character tools and technologies for triple-A games and virtual reality experiences.
Sealing the deal in April of this year, Shocap announced the innovative début project, LiViCi, in collaboration with Les 7 Doigts, a world-renowned, contemporary circus arts collective with over 18 years’ experience creating original productions varying from intimate one-man shows to large-scale arena performances, Broadway musicals, Olympic ceremonies, televised performances, and much more. The live immersive theatre production fuses real-time computer animation with live circus theatrical performance presenting an unprecedented approach to mixed media performance entertainment.
Brett Ineson, Executive Director of Shocap, comments: “The element of spontaneity in live virtual entertainment has largely been missing up until now, with many effects and visuals being pre-recorded. Integrating the generation of CG with live performance like this means the graphics are truly part of the show.”
Athomas Goldberg, Executive Director of Shocap, comments: “I came to computer graphics 25 years ago from a career in live theatre, and it’s really exciting to be at a point where we can start to integrate real-time animation and visual effects, technologies that had previously been used almost exclusively in films and video games, giving performing artists tools to tell new stories or tell classic stories in new ways.”
In January, Les 7 Doigts, Co-Artistic Director, Samuel Tétreault, led a group of circus performers – including acrobats, aerialists, and jugglers – in a three-day workshop at Animatrik’s motion-capture facilities in Vancouver, to test and explore uses of the technology in a live-action performance environment.
With a premiere planned for fall of 2022, this unique performance is brought to life through the use of real-time motion capture, in which the dynamic, death-defying, actions of the performers drive the movement of digital characters and animated effects in a fully-realized interactive virtual world. The feature-length performance will be presented in front of live theatre-goers while simultaneously streamed to online audiences connecting to the immersive experience from their VR headsets or gaming PCs.
With funding from the Epic Games MegaGrant program, and support from the Canada Media Fund and Creative BC, the project aims to advance Shocap’s mission to create new and exciting experiences that combine the visual expressivity of computer animation and visual effects with the emotional immediacy of live performance. Shocap utilizes a range of real-time virtual production tools, such as the Unreal Engine, Optitrack, Ncam and Pixotope, alongside internally developed proprietary systems to generate the awesome power of 3D animation in real-time.
Samuel Tétrault, co-founder and artistic director of Les Doigts de la Main, comments: “The first workshop collaborating with Shocap has absolutely blown my mind! As a live performance director, I feel we just started scratching the surface of an entirely new realm of possibilities: blending live performance with real-time motion capture and video animation to create a movie-like theatrical experience unseen before! In the years to come, using game engines like Epic’s Unreal Engine might just be the game-changer in live entertainment.”
PXR 2020: Shocap Entertainment Presents
On October 2nd Shocap co-founder, Athomas, and Samuel Tétreault, of Les 7 Doigts, are presenting at the Performance & XR Virtual Reality Symposium. Find out about Shocap Entertainment and the future of mixed-reality entertainment by signing up below join the session at 13:15 Pacific Time.
PR and Marketing contacts
Siobhán Hofma | Account Director | Siobhan@GrammatikAgency.com
Joby Reeves | Account Executive | Joby@GrammatikAgency.com
About Shocap
Created in partnership by Lifelike & Believable and Animatrik, Shocap Entertainment produces live cross-reality entertainment using real-time visual effects technology and on-stage human performance to create unique shared experiences simultaneously performed in front of live audiences, online audiences connecting from VR headsets, gaming PCs, and video streaming services. Each production draws from the contributions of multiple creative voices, with experienced collaborators from live performance, film, animation and video games. https://www.shocap.com/
About Samuel Tétreault, Les 7 Doigts
As co-founding artistic director of Les 7 Doigts, Samuel Tétreault has directed and/or co-directed numerous live circus productions including Vice & Vertu, Bosch Dreams, Triptyque, Project Fibonacci, La Vie and Loft. Les 7 Doigts, a contemporary circus arts collective, tells stories using death-defying acrobatics with life-affirming theatricality that is unique to the company. Since its inception, the company has expanded from its own signature shows to creating theatrical experiences as diverse and unique as the very artistic directors themselves, original productions ranging from intimate one-man shows to large-scale arena performances, Broadway musicals, Olympic ceremonies, televised performances, fashion, art and music events, immersive experiences and much more. www.7fingers.com
