THE FAMILY FACTORY
A play for children and grown ups with virtual puppets.

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DESCRIPTION
The family factory is a play about an old theme: the family as a fundamental unit shaping the members as individuals in society. It is about adapting to the idealized picture of the perfect family and the emotions that can get stuck beneath the surface in the process.
For this known theme the play uses an experimental form in combining modern theatre with traditional animation, puppettheatre and performance animation (live 3D-computer animation). Via the stage virtual creatures find their way into our world interacting with the actors and thorough them, with the audience.

On the stage we see the four family members played by four actors. The virtual puppets are acting on stage in the same right as the "real" actors being played live via motion capture equipment like puppets in the puppettheatre. They appear in 4 projection screens, which constitute the walls of the flat. The magnetic sensors for the motion capture are built into the toys of little sister. The steering techniques for the virtual puppets have been specially programmed for the unique features of each puppet. The virtual puppets are modeled in 3D studio Max and animated live in Filmbox by Kaydara. The dreams in the chaos scene are prerecorded videos of the family members keyed into animated backgrounds with bluescreen technique.

PARTICIPANTS
Jørgen Callesen