Tuesday, January 15th, 2008...3:58 pm
BETT 2008- Media Stage
Immersive Education was one of the many companys that I had on my ‘To Visit’ list at BETT. Here in East Lothian, we have purchased ‘Media Stage’ licenses for our English Departments.
Media Stage is a 3D virtual perforamce stage. Users are involved in script-writing, casting, set building, propping, directing, lighting, audio-recording, editing and camera skills:
Immersive Education:
Students build and populate their sets, select their characters and arrange lighting and cameras using objects from the software library. Character movements, lighting and cameras are in their full control. Students can:
- Record or type in character dialogue and see it performed with automatic lip-synchronisation
- Control character movements, gestures and emotions
- Set camera positions and live edit
- Save and share performances
John Griffiths from Immersive Education gave me a demonstration of the software. I have to say I was very impressed! It is amazing and almost freaky how realistic you can make your characters. Having an old woman character called Enid say ‘Hello’ in my voice was just incredible! 
This software will be/is fantastic for role play. In fact I am lead to believe that it is being used with young offenders, making them realise and understand the consequence of their actions on their victims.
Here is a clip that Ewan McIntosh shot during a Teachmeet in 2006 where media stage was being demonstrated.
Here is another clip where the topic was MacBeth.
5 Comments
January 15th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Hi Tess, as we are getting a site license for media stage will be able to get this installed on the other lap tops that we already have in our English department? Also - do you know if we are getting a Misson Maker site license as well? If not this might be something we would look at buying ourselves.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Hi, most drama departments had this in my previous council. What a great resource for Higher and Intermediate students. We used it for the Investigative and Text and Context units. This programme really enables students to look at their directing ideas on a screen before they start to block their scenes. Great resource and one I would recommend…. just curious why English are getting it? does it fit into their curriculum?
January 16th, 2008 at 10:24 am
@OB- The site License for Media stage will be available on all machines within your English Department. Still checking MissionMaker. I’ll let you know
@John- I have just discussed Drama’s access to this software. Good news! Drama should be able to use Media Stage too
January 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Hi Tess, Glad you liked the demo. It was good to see such an active Scottish contingent at BETT. Good news is that E Lothian have bought a site AND home licence for the secondaries, which means you are licenced to install it on all machines belonging to the schools, and students and staff can install it on their own machines at home, too. We will provide a disk to each school which can be copied and training is included too. I am also waiting to hear if E Lothian is buying MissionMaker. Please let me know if you hear before me
I’m looking forward to seeing some more MediaStage characters talking with Lothian accents!
January 16th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Thanks for your comment John! I am hoping to get some of East Lothian’s Media Stage productions onto Edubuzz.
I will let you know about MissionMaker.
Cheers,
Tess
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