Less than a year before the pandemic, on 12 March 2019, peer health interns Zanele Melapi and Sibulele Bontshi reflected on their participation in the "citizen science fiction" storyworld Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm, at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre, Masiphumelele, South Africa.
Media Arts Futures: In Conversation with Pascal Langdale, Actor, Teacher, and Co-Author of "Performing for Motion Capture"
Moderated by Alison Humphrey
Presented by the Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University
March 29, 2022
About Pascal
Pascal Langdale is an actor and teacher known for his reliable versatility across multiple media. He has worked in TV, film, voice and video game, and has been described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of Mocap. Head of the Canadian branch of The Mocap Vaults, he is a movement specialist with an expertise in nonverbal behavior, bringing characters to life through voice, body and psychology.
Pascal's most recent mocap work includes Far Cry 6 as a body double, and the voice of Bagley in Watch Dogs: Legion (for which he as nominated for a Canadian Game Award), also contributing to many of the 'Play as Anyone' NPC's, as actor and movement choreographer. He has worked on numerous video games since his first role as Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain, including voice, mocap and performance capture, actor performance matching, reverse ADR, facial capture operation and demo production.
A born Londoner, Pascal is a graduate of the 3-year acting course at the UK's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made Toronto his home in 2011. He has credits in supporting roles in more than 100 TV, film roles, in the past decade in Canada, these include Killjoys, Bitten, Suits, and the recent Randal Okita movie, See for Me.
With John Dower, Pascal co-wrote Performing for Motion Capture, the world's first in-depth resource for the education of the next generation of actors in digital production, including interviews with over twenty experts in all stages of the pipeline.
The event was kicked off by special guest Dr. Steven J. Hoffman, Director of the Global Strategy Lab, Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science at York University, and Scientific Director at the CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health. Huge thanks to Steven for joining us!
One of the students in the course, Man Yiu Kingsley Wong, is also a talented photographer, and took the initiative to document the afternoon, which was particularly poignant as it was the only day of the whole term in which we gathered on campus in person.
Three-quarters of the class met outside York's Centre for Film and Theatre, right across the street from the Global Strategy Lab in the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research...
...while intrepid teaching assistants Lokchi Lam and Kurt Walker made sure the other quarter of us could participate via Zoom...
Please join us on March 10 for a free webinar with pop culture polymath Evan Narcisse, writer of comics, video games and animation, which I'll be hosting as part of my course Writing for Games and Interactive Media.
Evan Narcisse works as a writer and narrative design consultant in video games, comic books, and TV, often focusing on the intersection of blackness and pop culture. As a journalist and critic, he’s written for The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Kotaku, and The New York Times, in addition to teaching game journalism at New York University and appearances as an expert guest on CNN and NPR. He’s also the author of the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel and a contributor to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Redfall, and Marvel’s Avengers. A native New Yorker, he now lives in Austin, Texas.
Presented by the Department of Cinema and Media Arts.
The new project is titled Co-Creating Vaccine Confidence: An Anishinabe Theatre-Based Approach to Strengthen Indigenous Youth and Young Adult Vaccination Support, and it's funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under the COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence - Indigenous Health Research Operating Grant.
The team has grown to include more great folks from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, among others, and is led by principal investigators Marion Maar, Maurianne Reade, and Mariette Sutherland. (Yes, Marion, Maurianne and Mariette – a trio of names tailor-made for a musical theatre number!)