Bringing Dame Bella Ballcock to Life in the Virtual Fountain of Youth

Advanced Media Production PROTO collaborated with Natasha Haws (Co-Director) and Ray Spencer MBE(Co-Director, Writer, and Actor) to bring their creative vision to life in the Mother Goose pantomime at The Customs House. Their aim was to develop a young version of Dame Bella Ballcock, who appears within the mystical Fountain of Youth in the pantomime.  

By leveraging cutting-edge digital production techniques, the team at Advanced Media Production PROTO successfully created a metahuman that had Ray’s younger face with a dancer’s body and were able to integrate this metahuman into the theatre performance, enhancing the pantomime’s magical storytelling.

‍

Photogrammetry & Metahuman Creation

The first step was to conduct a 360-degree photogrammetry scan of both Ray Spencer and his understudy, Tom. These scans provided the foundation for creating highly realistic metahumans, ensuring that the digital transformation reflected the actors’ face.

One of the crucial elements of Dame Bella Ballcock’s persona is her distinctive wardrobe, which features vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds. Given the importance of continuity between the digital and physical world to ensure the audience truly believed that Dame Bella had entered the Fountain of Youth and become a younger version of herself, it was imperative that the metahuman’s costume aligned with other outfits worn on stage. Since no existing digital assets matched this aesthetic, a bespoke outfit was designed for the metahuman. This custom design also needed to be physically replicable by the wardrobe team to maintain coherence between the real-life and virtual versions of Dame Bella.

‍

Motion Capture

Once the metahuman was finalised, the next stage involved a dedicated motion capture session. This session was a pivotal moment for Co-Director Natasha Haws, as it was the first time that she was able to see what the final product would look like.

The motion capture session involved recording two performances in tandem: Ray Spencer recorded the facial expressions and the dialogue, while a professional dancer performed the body movements in sync. This allowed Co-Director Natasha to direct both actors at the same time and instantly see what the performance would look like on the screen behind them.

Through a seamless fusion of traditional theatre and innovative digital production, Advanced Media Production PROTO successfully helped to realise the vision of a youthful Dame Bella Ballcock.  

The integration of a metahuman into the pantomime not only added a fresh layer of visual storytelling but also really engaged audiences of all ages. This project exemplifies the power of emerging media technologies in enhancing artistic expression and has played a role in pushing the boundaries of one of the UK’s oldest art forms, bringing together Victorian and 21st Century magic.

Further Information  

The Advanced Media Production network represents the UK’s first networked advanced media production studios, and the UK’s first interconnected 5G enabled facility designed to explore research and innovation capabilities in media production.

If you would like to learn more about Advanced Media Production, check out the website here.

‍