Monday 8 July 2013

In the forefront of audience reseach

In 1979 my wife, Marianne, and I had taken up an invitation to be actors in residence at Churchill College in Cambridge UK. Both being professional actors we were naturally interested in audiences. With the help of the College we set up an experiment in which we performed a variety of short peices to an invited audience. A camera was trained on us, the performers, and a camera was trained on the audience - the audience knew what was happening but quickly forgot they were being 'watched'. The result was recorded on a machine that I think was the first portable video recorder. The format was simple but the result very instructive - the screen was 'split' into two with Marianne and me on the lower section and the audience on the upper. Recently I found the tape and have had it restored and tranferred to disc by a company in Bristol - I have yet to see the results but their blog gives me hope that it will a true blast from the past. I am not sure how one gets their blog but for anyone who is interested I suggest they try googling Great Bear audio Bristol-