RED CREATE SPIRITS AND GRAPHICS FOR ‘A CHRISTAMAS CAROL’

CHRISTMAS wouldn’t be Christmas without a performance of Dickens 'A Christmas Carol', but this year the classic has been given a modern twist in the form of back-projected spirits and graphics created by Soho visual communications facility, Red.
Actor Clive Francis's working of the Dickens play, a one-man band performance featuring Francis as Ebenezer Scrooge, will open at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford on December 12. The play will also be the inaugural performance at the Hampton Court Theatre on December 16.
Red built a model of the set that exactly matched the proportions of the one that would appear on stage. The model was filmed and a grid created to enable Red to work out the exact positions on stage where the spirits would appear. Tim Bird shot the phantoms and additional performances of Clive Francis against blue screen and then worked closely with Red to create the spectres – the brief being to create a Victorian-style version of the Princess Leia projections from ‘Star Wars’.
Francis was shot blue screen – DS editors Alex Pickering and Henry Cummings with Henry editors Tim Rudgard and David Kiddie, then added morph transitions and light effects to create the eerie end result. The spirits will be back-projected onto the stage and run simultaneously with the actor's performance. (CD)