Return to the Forbidden Planet @ Niagara University

“Return with us to the 1950s, when Sci-Fi movies echoed the American post-war fear of the Russians, fear of the Atomic Bomb, fear of nefarious Mad Scientists whose experiments could result in giant monster bugs or mutated humans. And the one thing Americans feared more than all of the others: Rock & Roll…

 Loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this high-energy jukebox musical is packed with rock classics that will have you dancing in your seats, including “Great Balls of Fire,” “Good Vibrations,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “Young Girl” and “Gloria”.”

Design Challenges:

From the beginning we wanted to approach the video design from a place that would look authentic to the 1950’s. We decided to film as much as we could with real objects and use camera tricks where we could to mimic the look of a 1950’s sci-fi film.

Technical Challenges:

Multiple video and networking systems were created to make this function. A montage sequence about how Prospero ended up stranded was filmed and edited in Adobe Premiere. A miniature spaceship, asteroids and the monster were created and filmed in front a green screen to be used in sequences for the production. Other sequences like the space travel and the crash landing were completely created in after effects. And finally, a live video feed was used to use when the ship was being hailed and the conversation was put ‘on screen’.