STREET MULTIMEDIA MATCH - FINALE!

Mix video editing technologies, group of idiots, the world's most popular sport, put it on a public place with an audience, and what do you get?

The 'Finals!', latest street performance of Grejpfrut group, which decided to use a multimedia approach to our audience and work mostly behind the scene. The performance is depicting a soccer game in a comic fashion, or better put: it's a comic around-the-corner transmission of a soccer game. Passerbys unknowingly act as soccer players, coaches and referees; we just provide video/audio technology and add a 'professional' running commentary. We're using a few cameras, a mixer and a laptop computer for the real-time video/audio editing and a video projector to show the picture on the screen. The soccer ball is not visible to the 'players', it's added in real-time to the final picture (as well as statistics, match time, player info,...) and it's controlled by a computer mouse. During the whole game the native speaker takes place of the commentator. A commentator is invited in each country partucalarly for the shows held there, to cooperate with us and to participate as one of the performers. The sound of our commentary is underlaid by the original soccer match cheering and at the turning points of the game we add referee's whistle. The video projection is set just around the corner from the square where the match is being played. After assembling all these features of the live sport transmission (and adding some more) we can entertain the audience during the halftimes as well as in between and after the match when we interview some players and other soccer 'experts'.

This approach allows the actual course of events to be completely different each time we run this performance, accordingly to the space/time, where it's being played. Using cameras, we exploit all interesting features of the street and whatever is happening to the passerbys, and by real-time video editing and commentary turn them into common, but comic soccer game situations. Player and team infos, obligatory game statistics, time and result, penalties, sound of cheering, referee's whistle, virtual mouse-driven soccer ball and all the rest are the elements we use to turn any square or a wider street into a real soccer ground and the 'innocent' passerbys into soccer players who unknowingly pass the ball among themselves, make offences and score goals.

The first performance of the 'Finals!' has been hold in Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 2003, during the Ana Desetnica festival of street theatre.