61 THE LIVE LIFE Orbital Redux
through a cabinet or wall panel, making sure that we’re not just shooting medium coverage directly in front of our cast, and that we’re able to watch them move through the space and play with it in different ways. “The ship design itself had a lot of fun parts that the actors could play with,” continues Diaz-Przybyl. “We really tried to make it tactile – it’s a world where technology has moved forward, but where it’s also more analogue. Computer viruses and AI have run rampant and the only way to protect against that is to go back to an Apollo era, with switches and buttons as opposed to glossy touchscreens.” In that respect, there wasn’t a lot of work needed in the series’ sound design. The switches and buttons had a visceral noise, which Diaz-Przybyl tells us contributed tremendously towards the audio. BELIEVING TAKES PRACTICE Orbital Redux was broadcast to Legendary Digital Network’s Project Alpha, which was the company’s own subscription- based service. It was also, on occasion,
WE LEARNT SO MUCH FROM THE PROCESS OF PUTTING THAT SHOW TOGETHER
simultaneously cast to Twitch and YouTube, depending on the episode. Project Alpha is now sadly defunct, its operations closing in May this year, but there are copies of all eight episodes available. Diaz-Przybyl informs us that they’re still trying to decide what to do with the series next. “We’ve thought about making it into a feature film, so we’d take all of the footage we have, and without losing any of the raw aspects of what we did combine it into a more coherent, tighter film narrative. An
alternative is to look for another streaming platform. We’ve been in contact with Hulu and Netflix and we’re just trying figure out which option makes sense for the story.” Butcher Bird Studios defines itself as a creative media company and it has worked on everything from industrials in the aerospace industry to interactive museum exhibits, including livestreaming for the National Geographic. “We couldn’t have done Orbital Redux two years ago, I don’t think we could have done it one year ago,” says Diaz-Przybyl. “For instance, this time last year, we created a 30-minute livestreamed improvised sitcom with Reggie Watts. We had ten cameras running, cutting back and forth between each other, and we did it for fun because we had worked with Watts a couple of times and he also liked the idea. “We learnt so much from the process of putting that show together, and all those lessons went into creating Orbital Redux , which was only put together four months later – but technology can change significantly in that time. Camera quality had improved, as had the integration of systems, with more and more systems becoming IP based. They’re incremental changes on different levels that, put together, make a big difference.”
MEET THE STARS The show cast Yasmine Al-Bustami (above) as Tommie and Yuri Lowenthal (below) as Max
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