Our Story | Athomas Goldberg
Meet the team of industry veterans who’re forging the future of new-way storytelling.
With several years at EA, followed by stints at Relic Entertainment and Microsoft Studios (now The Coalition) under his belt, Athomas went on to form Lifelike & Believable Animation Design in 2014. His drive was to broaden the scope of work beyond games to VR, AR and other emerging applications for real-time interactive animation. Over the past 6 years, Lifelike’s clients have included top drawer brands the likes of Oculus VR, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Walt Disney Imagineering and more.
The inspiration behind Shocap
In 2014, I co-founded Pepper’s Ghost New Media & Performing Arts Collective to explore the use of advanced real-time technologies in live performance. One of several productions was Worlds, which consisted of five dancers on three different mocap stages 3500 km apart, all performing together in a shared virtual world.
As early as 2018, the commercial potential for live performances featuring real-time technologies was becoming increasingly apparent, so Brett Ineson and I began discussing the possibility of producing larger-scale productions for international audiences. Having worked with circus performers on earlier projects, I knew that the highly dynamic and complex movement of circus performers presented some really compelling challenges and opportunities for storytelling using real-time motion capture and rendering.
As a long time fan, I reached out to Montreal’s Les 7 Doigts (aka The 7 Fingers) circus arts collective, and with our début production LiViCi we secured funding from Epic Games through their MegaGrants program along, with financing from the Canada Media Fund and Creative BC.
Building an immersive production is both a technical and creative process
None of what we do is animated or rendered in advance, so we have to create robust content and systems that can be ‘played’ live, and enable a degree of improvisation with the ability to respond to, and involve, the audience as it manifests.
Kathryn Brillhart, a cinematographer friend of mine, uses the phrase, “fix it in prep”, a play on the old Hollywood adage, “fix it in post” to describe the impact of real-time virtual production has had on film-making. For live performance, that’s not just a strategy, but our reality.
Our shows are simultaneously performed in front of live audiences, online audiences connecting from VR headsets, gaming PCs, and video streaming services. I envision each moment of the show from the point of view of the different audiences to try to create a compelling experience that is unique to each platform.
Combining creative industries to deliver Shocap Entertainment
Shocap productions combine elements of live performance, film, animation and video games, each of which has its own history, language, and conventions. Our shows depend on the contributions of many different creative voices. Bringing each of those voices into harmony with each other in the creation of an original work means having experienced collaborators from each of these industries involved in the creative process from the very beginning.
The future of Shocap Entertainment and its impact on live performance
LeViCi will be a transformative event in the way a contemporary circus is produced and presented. We’re already engaging with artists across the spectrum of live performance, including music, theatre, and dance.
We believe that live-streaming can and should do more than simply deliver a temporary substitute for in-person attendance, but serve as a way to bring on-line and in-person audiences together, by treating the connected audience as a first-class participant, and the online connection, as a unique and compelling way to experience the live performance in its own right.
The prevalence of real-time technology for immersive performances
Video projection and projection design have become increasingly prevalent in live theatrical performances since the early 1990s. Traditionally, with pre-recorded video, you were often forced to restrict the movement and timing of your performers in order to conform to the video so tightly that the spontaneity and ‘life’ of the performance are lost.
Real-time technologies provide a unique opportunity for more dynamic performances where the visuals are generated by, and in response to, the actions of the live performers – even supporting real-time interaction with the audience. Going beyond the in-theatre experience, real-time technologies open the door to more actively engaging online audiences, bringing the sound and motion of the live performers into fully interactive multiplayer 3D game worlds, where attendees aren’t merely passive spectators – they’re active participants.
Athomas Goldberg
Co-Founder and Executive Director
