CREATIVE INNOVATION

“The thing that survives is that which has a certain combination of normality with distinction. It has simplicity with a slight touch of strangeness. It is a tale just sufficiently unusual to be worth telling, and yet immediately intelligible when told.”

—G.K. Chesterton

creative, N. : marked by the ability or power to create

LIVE CINEMA

Artistic Highwire that Lays Bare Stakes in Art, and Life

Already embedded in the name of our enterprise — Man-a-LIVE — we will integrate the highest artistics standards of previous generations into the medium of Live Cinema by uniting the techniques of cinema (e.g., cinematography, lighting, sound, music, and editing) with the raw immediacy of live performance (e.g., accent, setting, and appearance). Thus, our in-the-moment production will be stylistically inventive and masterful in technique, defined by a lightness and delicacy of style, a balance between tradition and innovation, and an unusually creative representation of theological mystery — inducing frisson throughout the audience, borne of experiencing, in real time, Aristotle’s dictum about the dramatic unity of action, time, and place. 

Specifically, we will combine the location of the stage, the logistics of live sports television, and the language, look, and feel of cinema to “set the stage” (on both the personal level and that of the common history of mankind). As such, our production of the play Death Comes for the War Poets (written by the British-American biographer, essayist, and literary critic Joseph Pearce in 2016 and performed Off Broadway in 2017 — receiving critical acclaim in secular as well as faith-based media) will be nothing less than the creation of a new art form: Live Cinema, a triple-hybrid, artistically noble high-wire act that separates Manalive from the madding crowd.  

Therefore, in offering our inaugural project as a true innovation, one whose thematic structure will be lean and strong, the Manalive venture will be uniquely positioned as a cinema “last mover,” an enterprise-level strategy that will be a key to our ongoing success.

conceptual boundaries

Retrospective Realization Draws the Line Somewhere

With Chesterton’s quote at the outset of this prospectus intro serving as our conceptual “North Star”, our story approach will be an interpretation of the play, respecting various conceptual boundaries within its existing framework, both practical (e.g., limitations of scale, place, and character) and formal (e.g., the verse-heavy dialogue and inherent theatrical roots), undergirded by philosophical, theological, and anthropological allusions woven throughout — all tied to the universal imagination, i.e., the “afterimage” principles of sacramentality, mediation, and communion that strike deep into the human psyche, and which will resonate given the spiritual desolation of the age. 

Consequently, ours will necessarily be an adaptation, rooted in the use of Live Cinema techniques to unshackle Death Comes for the War Poets from its theatrical roots, finding creative mechanisms to transform it into a powerful cinematic experience. In so doing, we will also elevate the need for a spiritual solution to the problem of evil through what will be a dramatic illustration of the sacramental principle ex opere operato, compelling self-examination in light of the truth presented in the work of art.

Ultimately, higher sense imagination — whereby we touch upon truths that transcend the here and now through collage that sets moods, reveals character, and introduces symbolic meanings — will be our key to delivering effective cinema, one that leaves a universal “afterimage” within our patrons, engulfing them in the haunting mystery of joy. 

Integrated technology

A New and Better Way of Doing Things

For us this will mean leveraging cutting-edge technology of live sports and concerts for a live narrative production. In essence, multiple audio and video sources (e.g., live cameras, pre-recorded content, graphics, VFX, audio and music) will be routed to a central switcher, edited together — in real time — into a single, continuous stream of content for direct broadcast.

Portability of this approach increases exponentially as we will create 90% of the necessary technical outline for future productions. The technology map of our staging of Death Comes for the War Poets then becomes a strategic prototype, conveying our process is repeatable — open to “all comers” whose creative muse lends itself to strategic partnership with us. 

Lastly, and most importantly, our ability to create a true work of art will be anchored in an overall orientation towards the gentle and non-violent, the elegant and beautiful, such that our unconventional story provides (echoing Romano Guardini, the Italian priest, philosopher and theologian) that spiritual relaxation in which the convulsions of the will are stilled, the restlessness of struggle quietened, and the shrieking of desire silenced.

—G.K. Chesterton