Theatre & Performance

Mesmer's collective skills are a natural complement for Theatre and Performance.

We can develop our designs with directors and set designers, advise on capital expenditure for long term projects, and assist with the development and organisation of infrastructure. Mesmer set up the first video department at the National Theatre in London advising on expenditure and implmentation over five years.

We don't deliver a one-size-fits-all system. Instead, we thrive on finding bespoke solutions to provide unique, innovative projection media, including live camera, video, animation and slide presentations for site-specific locations that integrate with mechanical staging requirements.

  • Turn of the Screw

    Robert Carson sets the opera as Hitchcock psychological-thriller, with the Governess as the neurotic and beautiful lead, evoking a Tippy Hedrin like character.  Set, costume, props and video are all in black and white creating a clean and stark environment for the show to play out in.

    The video has two big jobs in the show, firstly, it fills a series of massive windows looking out on to the bare and lonely park land that surrounds Bly House, where at one point the ghost of Quint drifts past.

    Secondly there are two major film sections to the piece, the first filmed on location in a Victorian train carriage outside of Vienna is for the Governesses journey to Bly.  We borrowed a great deal of camera and lighting technique from Hitchcock, making something that feels very 1930’s. This 3 minute short film grows out of a slide show and is then cut live to the orchestra and singer to keep everything perfectly in sync.

    The next large film piece is a 8 minute short, again cut live to the orchestra and signers for the Governesses sexual-nightmare at the end of Act 1.  Over two days we filmed with all the singers in the piece using a mixture of hand held, steady cam, jib and conventional tripod to create nightmare the was projected onto a gauze with the bed vertically upright behind it.

    All play back on Pandoras Box, control by Grand MA 2 and using a mixture of Charistie Roadster S+16k and Barco FLM R+22.

  • Ten Plagues

    A one man song-cycle, performed by Marc Almond, wirtten by Marc Ravenhill. London is infected. The dead fall in the streets, the plague of 1665 takes hold and we go on one man's journey through a city in crisis.

  • Beautiful Burnout

    An innovative video wall comprised of five Mesmer Catalyst servers comprises one of the main st pieces of Beautiful Burnout, Frantic Assembly's new physical theatre piece about amatuer boxing.

    The footage on the wall was filmed at resolutions up to 4k using Red cameras, and the full wall itself has a total resolution width of over 4500 pixels, split across the star-shaped 21-LCD screen arrangement.

  • Knight Crew

    Video and Projection design for the opera.  The set is a large metal cube that rotates and folds open that can be projected on to in any of it's configuerations.  This is done with two Barco CLM's and Catalyst.

    A large underwater film shoot was undertaken, as well as extensive filming of the chorus and lead singers and the development of a graphiti based runic alphabet to create material for the show.

  • Ali to Karim

     The demands of rapidly touring across the U.S. was only possible by careful integration of Catalyst at the earliest stage of the production and having a touring programmer. This allowed for the development of the piece when touring, with new actors and script changes and media content, as well as coping with the wide variety of venues and very short get in times.

  • A Disappearing Number

    Measure for Measure and A Disappearing Number are major collaborations with a unique and innovative mix of live and pre recorded camera, multiple surfaces and live integration with the performance. In 2004 this was the first time Catalyst media servers were used with a dual input mix down of multiple (8) cameras.

  • The Woman In White

    Groundbreaking bespoke development of scenic projection with 3D animation using custom software to integrate our projection design and animation for programming, playback and mechanical staging requirements.