Every programmed show has a shape: a crystalline structure of powerful technologies and frame-tight margins of error, with time flowing through it. Building that structure, deciding when and then how, is our principal creative contribution to what the audience perceives as the straight line of the narrative. The shape is made of timelines, layers, and cues, but also of operational methods and contingency plans. We mostly don't see it until all the bits are laid out, and we rarely get to compare our shapes and patterns with anyone else. Most of our vocabulary is borrowed from neighboring crafts (look, cue, and preset from lighting; the timeline from editing; layers from compositing), and every team fills the gaps with its own private slang.

This session is a working room, not a lecture. After a short framing on pattern languages and a few worked examples you can explore in an interactive sandbox, most of our three hours belongs to your shows: in small groups you'll draw out the shape of a show you know well, then we'll put the shapes on a wall, compare them, and look for the structures the room keeps reinventing. Those patterns are the point. We'll try to catch the language we already almost share.

If the way you build shows has ever felt like knowledge that can't be easily explained, this is an attempt at fixing that, together.

Location

This workshop is hosted by L-Acoustics at their Highgate showroom, 67 Southwood Lane, London N6 5EG, with the adjacent meeting room for breakout groups.

• By tube: Highgate (Northern line, High Barnet branch) is a nine-minute walk along Southwood Lane; about 25 minutes from King's Cross St Pancras.
• From Heathrow: Elizabeth line to Tottenham Court Road, then the Northern line to Highgate, about an hour.
• By car: free parking on Southwood Lane outside 10am to 12pm; pay-by-phone parking on The Park; EV charging on Southwood Lawn Road.

L-Acoustics' directions, with the routes drawn: How to find us (PDF)