ABBA, Star Wars and Shakespeare: a re-invention of the UK screen industry
In the first Star Wars film, the droid R2D2 plays a holographic SOS message from Princess Leia to Luke Skywalker. When the film was released in 1977, the idea of a three-dimensional image projected into thin air was pure science fantasy.
Today, you can watch ABBA — or their virtual ABBAtars — perform a live ‘holographic’ arena show. A groundbreaking blend of technologies, ABBA Voyage uses motion and performance capture, realtime game engines, digital animation, projection mapping and integrated physical and virtual effects to create a sophisticated 3-D illusion. The effect is so lifelike, one reviewer commented, you don’t even have to suspend your disbelief. You are seeing ABBA at their late 70s peak.
Musician and futurist Brian Eno has called the current explosion in technology and creativity a Big Bang moment for the screen industries. The impact will be as seismic as the shift from theatre to cinema in the early 20th century.
The UK Creative Industries — a global success story
The success of ABBA Voyage, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed mixed-reality show Dream or the experimental visitor experience ‘Lost Origin’, show how rapidly things are evolving. Fueled by convergence, as technologies come together to make new experiences possible, the screen industries are booming.
With state-of-the-art facilities and a reputation for groundbreaking content and experience design, the UK currently leads the world. Two decades of tax incentives have driven inward foreign investment into the UK’s VFX houses, gaming labs, and studio facilities. From 2020–21, the sector boosted UK GDP by over £15 billion.
Staying ahead in the innovation game
While the screen and performance industries continue to flourish, the sector remains volatile and highly vulnerable to new waves of disruption. New convergent technologies and innovation can quickly sideline existing technologies. Disney’s recent Star Wars sequel, The Mandalorian, uses custom floor-to-ceiling wraparound LED screens instead of greenscreen technology to create lifelike virtual sets. Industry experts are already predicting the rapid demise of current greenscreen technologies.
Yet despite the obvious benefits of continuous innovation, research into future technologies is often seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. Time-poor visual houses are often focused income now rather than costly R&D that may not produce benefits for many years.
“The resources needed to keep up with new technology — or even maintain existing licenses, contracts and updates — can be significant” says Tao-Tao Chang, Head of Infrastructure at the Arts and Humanities Research Council. “If we want exceptional growth, inward investment and a stake in the future, we need to de-risk R&D.”
CoSTAR — unleashing the power of R&D
Convergent Screen Technologies And performance in Realtime (CoSTAR) is a new R&D infrastructure network for the screen and performance sectors, CoSTAR will enable the convergence of different creative sectors.
This convergence is the foundation of the metaverse concept that will likely mark the next phase of the digital and creative economies. Powered by realtime technologies developed by the computer games sector, it captures people and objects in full-motion 3-D.
“We have the power to shape entirely new worlds and experiences,” says Professor Andrew Chitty, UKRI Challenge Director. “By giving smaller creative businesses access to the kind of kit the big commercial players are using, we can drive experimental innovation and build the screen experiences of the future.”
CoSTAR builds on the success of the Audience of the Future programme, which aimed to transform the creative and events economies. The programme focussed on the development of new immersive experiences using virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
Dinosaurs and Robots — Lost Origin, one of many Audience of the Future projects, was a first-of-its-kind, interactive, multi-sensory mixed-reality quest.
Gamifying the museum experience helped visitors explore a new kind of exhibition in deeper and more exciting ways. And this collaboration between the Natural History and Science Museums, theatre companies, and a creative technology SME is providing insight into how to use the technologies that will transform the visitor experience for the generations who were weaned on screens.
Making the future now
As the metaverse opens for business and AI continues to transform the way we live, work and learn, the next step in our evolution as digital humans is underway. By asking questions about our shared past, where we are now, and how we want to live, researchers are helping to shape the creative futures we get next.
Want to know more?
If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund work like this, via UK Research and Innovation — the UK’s largest public funder of research — and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can read more about what we do here, and more about Co-STAR here. Find out more about the Audience of the Future programme at audienceofthefuture.live
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