💪The Production Value Arms Race

Wayfinding: Taxonomy > Cinematic Theatre > The Production Value Arms Race

In her own introduction to points out that during the early days of lockdowns in 2020, large theatres ‘rushed to adapt to the “new normal” of isolation by hastily checking and renegotiating broadcast contracts so as to allow them to open up their archives’. While their physical doors were shut, many companies opened their archival vaults, which allowed isolated audiences to engage with an audiovisual reminder of being in a theatre space together, watching a play on a stage. While theatre absorbed the shock of in-person seasons scheduled from 2020 through 2022 being cancelled, rescheduled, and adjusted, large companies were able to create a sense, for their fans, that they still had a full theatrical season to enjoy.

Livestreaming companies leapt onto this bandwagon. Grant Dodwell, for example, found that Australian Theatre Live’s cinematic recordings were suddenly very valuable across multiple streaming platforms: ‘We were part of the English company, Digital Theatre+. … And we did around Vimeo online, like pay-per-view. … we had five of our films on ABC iView – they called us up immediately, or three weeks into Covid, saying, “Can we have your films?” And we put five or six films, I think? And we're about to put on another four’. Australian Theatre Live has since released their filmed theatre works on their own platform.

Archival release was harder for smaller and mid-sized theatre companies who may not have high-quality recordings from prior seasons, if any archives at all; they were then in competition with large companies without the cinematic quality. Andrew Hungerford summed up the problem for smaller players: ‘by the time we were able to get the rights sort of secured and built-up, the NTLive [National Theatre Live] stuff had really started streaming’. This led, as Nathan Leigh described to me, to a ‘production value arms race’ with smaller theatres using the tools they had on hand to catch up to professionally filmed stage shows from years prior: ‘it felt like sometime around January 2021, people started pivoting from like, “What can we do live?” to, “How can we increase our production values?” And the answer to “How can we increase our production values?” is well, You film it, and you edit it well’.

Morgan Green criticised this leap into a new practice as ‘theatre people trying to make a movie, essentially, but nowhere near the resources or experience’. Disparity in funding, and thus to certain technologies and training, arguably became more apparent in 2020 as larger theatres released their high-quality Cinematic Theatre shows, and smaller and mid-sized companies had to find other methods to retain audience attention.

On the upside, many theatre makers discovered that consumer-grade digital cameras and smartphones can create recordings in 4K, which is the best value for most online streaming platforms – as of 2024, you as a theatre maker do not need huge, expensive broadcast cameras or rigs to film your show well. Digital tools and wide-spread internet access both allow any theatre maker to create a good quality recording of their show and has caused an increase in the glut of similar works accessible online. The next section Tips & Tricks hopes to help your Cinematic Theatre piece stand out.