For centuries, the magic of theater was defined by its ephemeral nature - a fleeting, unique experience shared solely by the performers and the audience in that moment. The live performance was the only performance.

Even as technology advanced, attempts to capture this magic often fell short. Most recorded theatrical performances were recorded as-is, rushed and captured as an afterthought or purely for archival purposes. The resulting footage is often static, uninspired, and merely matter of fact - 'this is a recording of a live performance'. It often lacks artistic direction and fails to offer any added value beyond a basic record of the event, sans the immediacy and energy of the live experience.

Team StarKid’s Digital Roots and Exponential Growth

Formed by a group of University of Michigan students in 2009, Team StarKid shot to global fame when they uploaded their first project, A Very Potter Musical, to a young online platform YouTube; which was just four years old at the time. Those were the early days of the digital online video and that space would soon prove to be revolutionary in media consumption habits.

Team StarKid started to realize something interesting: the performance doesn't need to end when the live theater run concludes.

They began to leverage this emerging digital space by recording and uploading their projects and making them available online for anyone in the world to see. This exposure opened the door for international discovery and the exponential growth of their dedicated fanbase, proving the immense appetite for high-quality recorded theater.

With their growing reach, the team recognized that their online audience deserved a better viewing experience than a simple static archival video.

Elevating Production Value with Cinematography

In 2019, on the heels of celebrating their 10th anniversary as a company, Team StarKid decided to significantly increase their production value for their next project, the horror-comedy musical Black Friday. They understood that merely recording the live show wouldn't cut it. They wanted to fuse the energy of the stage with viewing experience of a movie.

They decided to explore outside of the theater community and look to the next obvious related industry - Film. After discovering his impressive portfolio of work, they brought in Cinematographer Justin Ivan Hong to consult with them and lead the charge. He was tasked with this mandate: find a way to maintain the live stage experience but equally engage an online viewer.

     Screenshot from BLACK FRIDAY

This decision was pivotal to the company as Hong brought a completely different and distinctive cinematic approach that profoundly elevated the performances away from just being a basic stage recording that Team StarKid were used to.

Hong himself is a successful Cinematographer from Singapore who was invited to be a fellow at the prestigious and world-renowned American Film Institute (AFI). He has since become an internationally sought-after Cinematographer, splitting his time between projects in Asia and the United States. Team StarKid knew that they needed his unique visual language and artistic voice to help them discover what this new presentation format would be.

The solution was a groundbreaking hybrid: capturing the core performance in front of a live audience, and then augmenting it with several segments that were set up and shot like a normal film, without an audience present. These staged, close-up segments allowed the creatives to find new angles and insert detailed narrative moments that are impossible to capture during a traditional live show.

His expertise ensured that the technical decisions - the placement of the camera, the lensing choices, and the cinematic lighting - had a profound effect on the final product. Hong pioneered this new hybrid type of film, giving it the look and feel of a narrative feature film rather than a theatrical document. The cinematic approach allowed the audience to experience the show in a completely new way, intimately framing expressions and allowing them to feel closer to the action.

Team StarKid writer and director Nick Lang commented enthusiastically about the partnership:

"When we brought Justin onboard, we just wanted to see what was possible. He understood the vision immediately and together, we figured out the visual language for these stage shows ," Lang explains. "His work really gave this new format its signature look. It's not theater and it's not film - it's this exhilarating third thing, and the audience loves being able to intimately experience the show in a way a live audience never could. Even people who had seen the show live get a new fresh experience when watching the filmed version"

Hong credits the entire team's vision for the success of the format:

"When Nick and Team StarKid came to me, the unique challenge of creating a completely new format and type of film was exciting and exhilarating," Hong says. "They had this novel idea of something that truly hadn't been seen before and it was a satisfying challenge to figure out a way to preserve the theatrical integrity while delivering a highly polished cinematic product."

He continued, "The entire cast and production of Team StarKid are so talented and inspiring. It was an honor to be able to present them through a cinematic approach so that audiences, especially our massive international fanbase, can intimately enjoy these shows in a way that they would never experience in the live theater."

Writer / Director Nick Lang and Cinematographer Justin Ivan Hong

The collaboration has since continued on to three other films - Nerdy Prudes Must Die, Cinderella's Castle, and The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. The new format has been tremendously successful and the numbers speak for themselves: racking up almost 20 million views across the four feature films to date, with the view count continuing to rise every year.

Lang concluded with his thoughts about content distribution in the future:

"We at StarKid are a live performance company first and foremost. But we want to continue to move with the times and seek out audiences where they are because not everyone is able to come experience the show in person. That place in undoubtedly online. It is so important to us to translate the performance onto film at its best and with as much integrity as possible because once it's out in the world, it stays there waiting to be discovered. We certainly plan to bring Justin on to each and every project we have in the future because we don't think any other Cinematographer understands the unique method that this hybrid approach requires."

Screenshot from NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE