When All the Crowds Have Gone

At the height of his success, moving into his newly designed mansion, media tycoon John is dwelling on his past. In an attempt to control his legacy, he asks his younger brother to write his biography. Long-buried tensions between them threaten to derail John’s schemes, which involve everyone in his life from his actress wife to a pair of film director brothers. Can John keep control of the players in his game?

The script by Lucy Nordberg was tried out in performance at the Brighton Fringe Festival and was well-received by audiences and critics. With themes touching on the relationship between America and the UK, and the role of media in distorting people’s lives, it’s a timely story to commit to film.

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

This is part of our planned series of works that take new and classic scripts and film them in interesting or notable locations, bringing an epic and cinematic quality to strong play scripts. Our influences include Hitchcock’s Rope and Dial M for Murder – both adaptations of plays that translated well to screen. 

Each film will be captured both as a normal film for standard distribution, but also as fully immersive 360 productions, viewable in a VR headset. The 360 version of When All the Crowds Have Gone will place the viewer slightly set apart from the action as a passive observer – but an observer who gradually comes to realise that they are in fact a character central to the action taking place in front of them.

MPT has a residency at Fusebox in Brighton – a hub for digital innovators, tech visionaries and creative technologists – in order to help with the immersive side of our film making. We workshopped a section of the film to try out our planned storytelling techniques in 360, drawing from our experiences in theatre and film. You can read about the workshop here

We also completed two versions of a short film, The Mirror, as a normal and 360 film, which use different techniques to tell the same story. You can read more about the Mirror here and here. 

These experiences are helping to shape our current planning for the full-length film of When All the Crowds Have Gone.