A Most Favored Nation was an original immersive performance using augmented reality, set in the world of the Amazon Studios streaming series The Man in the High Castle. Developed over the course of 2019-202, it built on the research conducted by the Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2018.
Created by REMAP Director Jeff Burke and developed by a team of faculty, students and researchers, originally intended for in-person audiences at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, the piece explored theatrical and technological techniques that combined virtual elements seen on audience mobile phones with a live, in-person performance. Due to pandemic restrictions on live audiences at UCLA, it was adapted into a live-to-tape format that can be viewed interactively online as of February 5, 2022.
The show’s virtual component was created by the production team using Unreal Engine and delivered to audience members on iPhones. The devices were integrated into the original story. Both the series and its source material (Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel of the same name) are set within an alternate history in which a former United States is ruled by the Axis powers after they won World War II. In the novel, the characters find a book which tells of an alternative world where the Allies won the war. In the series, it is a set of newsreels. Within the story of A Most Favored Nation, set in 1963 Chicago, the alternative world was presented via personal televisions (the phones), given to the in-person audience as members of the Resistance.
Involving students from TFT, Computer Science and Architecture, the project investigated the implications of augmented reality and contemporary parallels to the politically charged alternative timelines of the series and the novel. Audience agency became a driving factor of the extended research and development process, especially as it related to creating virtual experiences (and virtual production) during the pandemic.
Supported by an Epic Games MegaGrant, the Hearst Foundations, and the TFT Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment, the process included many creative adjustments due to the unprecedented conditions under which it was made. The production plan originally included volumetric video produced with partner Intel Studios. When the studio closed due to the pandemic, the production pivoted to using multi-view “2.5D” video shot in-house. And to make the final performance available to larger audiences, an interactive streaming film was created using four simultaneous views from in-person audience phones. It allows remote audiences to choose which of its multiple storylines to follow, and when, with an interactive video platform also built by REMAP (using Cinema8).
Research results from A Most Favored Nation will form the basis for REMAP’s next augmented reality immersive performance project, The City and The City, based on the Hugo Award-winning novel by China Miéville.
For access to the interactive film documenting the performance, email amfn@remap.ucla.edu.
Feature by UCLA TFT Feature News (February 2022).
Full list of credits: remap.ucla.edu/amfn/credits.html.
From the mobile phones carried within the immersive performance (2021):
Recap of research (2021):
From the 2021 taping (click any image for a full view):
From the 2020-2021 research process (click any image for a full view):
A Most Favored Nation was a non-commercial exploration of The Man in the High Castle conducted with permission from Amazon Studios and support from an Epic Games MegaGrant, Intel Studios, and the Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment at UCLA TFT.
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television—2019-2022.