Immersive – Lucy Nordberg

When All the Crowds Have Gone

Lucy Nordberg — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:36:00 +0000

The play

At the height of his success, moving into his new mansion with his new wife, media tycoon John is dwelling on his past and how he will be judged by future generations. In an attempt to control his legacy, he persuades his younger brother to write his biography. But when John revives his wife’s career by embroiling his TV presenter neighbour in a scandal, long-buried tensions between the brothers threaten to topple his empire. Can John keep control of the players in his game?

The more I reflect on this play, the more I’m convinced it brings a fresh perspective to the human dilemma.
Fringe Guru

First performed at Brighton Fringe Festival, where it was well-received by audiences and critics, the play is about storytelling – the high-value stories that generate clicks and sell papers, and the ones we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. Featuring a film-within-a-play, and with characters involved in biography, film, acting, social media, TV shows, newspapers, and even poetry, the play shows that although the media industry gets most of the blame for distorting facts, every method of presenting a story to an audience can involve manipulation or lead to misunderstanding.

When All the Crowds Have Gone

360 Immersive Film

The play works on stage in front of a live audience. But there is another possible format for this story, that fully delves into its theme and allows the audience into the narrative and become aware of their effect on it. Filming the story as an immersive 360 film was an intriguing choice as a medium with the potential to add another layer and draw people further in.

In collaboration with Fusebox – a hub for digital innovators and creative entrepreneurs in Brighton – we filmed the first section of the play with a 360 camera. I experimented with new methods of writing for this immersive medium, adding a framing device to the plot while keeping the central part of play intact.

The experienced actors – Justin Hayward, John Locke, Jenny Knight and Kirsten Callaghan – were keen to investigate the exciting possibilities of 360 film, and adapted their performances style to suit. Chris Chowen and Chandler Dagg from Fusebox helped to capture and edit the footage.

The viewer wears a VR helmet to watch the edited scene, with the ability to experience everything going on around them. Although they are still essentially an observer, at times they are spoken to by the actors, and gradually come to realise that they are in fact a character central to the action of the story and its outcome.

The play can continue to be produced as it is, on stage, while there are possibilities for a full immersive 360 film version, viewed either as a full film or with each scene as a separate episode.

From Home

Lucy Nordberg — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 13:23:10 +0000

From Home is a project to capture the experience of home as it is lived and articulated by a broad range of individuals, presenting those experiences with digital technologies that are both reflective and illuminating.

Wherever it is shown, From Home invites and encourages those members of the public who experience the piece to contribute their own thoughts on home, so that the artwork becomes ever more layered, reflecting the rich complexity embedded in that single word home.

At an event for Brighton Digital Festival I presented with Marc Green, co-producer of Time and Tide, we met Tom Ottway from Language Umbrella media. Tom had researched ‘home’ and stories of home at the University of Sussex for many years, and we all felt that the subject was ideal for a piece of immersive theatre or interactive media.

Supported by the team at FuseBox innovation lab in Brighton, we later held our first event for Brighton Digital Festival, with Chris Chowen and Chandler Dagg creating the VR experience that hosts our content.

The story so far

The project began before lockdown, with a wealth of pre-pandemic material already gathered. From March 2020, we documented the various stages of lockdown at home as a piece of living archive, or social history in action. We asked the public to send in short videos of their experiences of home at this time, with great and varied responses coming in from all around the world.

Contributions ranged from people talking of self-isolating in a garden shed, to writing messages in pebbles on a beach and singing songs of hope in Montreal, Canada; of domestic violence in lockdown from India, to giving birth in lockdown in Margate; from a displaced Romanian performance poet’s expression of her body as home, to a man’s moving story of mourning his father.

I also wrote and co-produced a short film, Homecoming, completed during lockdown with the actor Samuel West. Read more about Homecoming here.

Our first event at the 2021 Brighton Digital Festival, supported by Wired Sussex’s innovation lab FuseBox, placed our extensive audio and visual content at the heart of an immersive VR experience. The event was programmed by Lighthouse, and supported through Digital Democracies, a programme led by Threshold Studios.
In the virtual environment, viewable with a 360 headset, visitors made their own way through a series of rooms – scanned from real-life locations, including participant’s homes, together with performance spaces such as the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts – and interacted at their own pace to experience the embedded sound art and videos.

After the experience, they were invited to be interviewed about their personal ideas of home while filmed in front of a green screen, creating content that will itself be used in the virtual world, as the project develops.

A launch party saw the live element of From Home brought to the fore, with some of the performers who had submitted material to the project entertaining the audience.

From Home event

From Home Logo Square

From Home: pic credit Erin James

From-Home

From Home: pic credit Erin James

Image for Wired Sussex

Lucy at From Home event Pic Credit: Erin James

The Mirror

Lucy Nordberg — Sat, 25 May 2024 13:01:27 +0000

Completed as two versions – both in traditional film and 360 VR – this short film set in Brighton’s historic Preston Manor is a literal reflection on the passing of time. The lady of a country house, over a hundred years ago, looks into her table mirror and prepares for the day, talking about the practical, everyday help the mirror gives to show how we look to others in the world. The film is also a warning that the image in the mirror can also just reflect and reinforce the distorted image we have of ourselves – and how the reflection, like us, will one day disappear.

I wrote and co-produced the film as part of my ongoing practise to use dramatic verse in modern work.

The traditional film version was shown as part of Latest Visions presents: International Women’s Day, broadcast on TV stations Northern Visions (Belfast), Latest TV (Brighton), Sheffield Live, and KMTV (Kent), Freeview 7 and Virgin Channel 159.

The 360 version screened as part of a Brighton Digital Festival event I held with Marc Green, co-producer, where we investigated the use of the 360 filming.

Why two versions?

Producing a 360 version alongside a traditional version was an ideal way to test the possibilities of 360 film. The two versions stand alone, but show different techniques to tell the same story. This test helped inform plans for longer form work – you can read more about the further development of these ideas for When All the Crowds Have Gone.

New film-making techniques are often thought of as futuristic, but classic stories also offer interesting possibilities. The 360 version of the Mirror immerses the viewer in a historic location – a period drama can be powerful when the viewer can fully enter that historic world.

The Mirror

You can watch The Mirror below

The Mirror – 360

The 360 version of The Mirror is also available. This is best experienced in a VR headset, but if you are watching on your phone, you can move it around to see all areas of the scene. On a computer, use your mouse to click and drag the image to change your view.

Stills

The Mirror film still

360 Stills

The Mirror 360 ‘ghost’ film still

The Mirror 360 film still

Cast and Crew

Lady of the House: Isabella McCarthy Sommerville
Lady’s Maid: Rosanna Bini

Director: Marc Green
Writer: Lucy Nordberg
Cinematographer: Justin Spray
Editor: Alexx Paul Sherman
Sound/Design/Mix: Pete Gill
Production Design: Paula Wrightson
Cinematography & Camera for 360 version: Michael Danks
Editor for 360 version: Johnny Simpson-Lee
With special thanks to: all at Preston Manor