From a love of classic films grew the desire to bring them back to life bigger and better for Leon Radojkovic.
While movies such as the Roger Corman 1960s black comedy horror Little Shop of Horrors or Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 or Herk Harvey's 1962 classic Carnival of Souls were beautiful, wonderful films, they had dated.
''The point was to take these films and make them watchable and brilliant again,'' director Oliver Driver says.
Driver joined Radojkovic's Live Live Cinema as director for the productions.
So Radojkovic re-worked the music and dialogue for new actors to perform while the original movie screened behind them.
''Carnival of Souls was a huge success and then we did Dementia 13 back-to-back which went very well too,'' says Driver.
With those productions there was a band and a guy in a sound booth doing the sound effects.
Then they had the idea: could four actors on stage do it all - the voices, the music and the sound effects?
''We didn't know if it could be done; to do it all live at once.''
It was decided to find a comedy rather than a thriller or horror as the past works had been and Little Shop of Horrors, the 1960 black-and-white version, was it.
''It was a terrible B movie.''
The performers had to be able to work at breakneck pace to create the live soundtrack while playing multiple characters: flower shop employee Audrey Fulquard is also the pianist, while her co-worker, Seymour Krelboyne, is on guitar, and all other characters are played by the drummer and the bass player.
''It's multidisciplinary so we needed to find people with great voices who could do character work, play all the musical instruments - be incredible performers.''
Byron Coll (who recently performed in Over the River and Through the Woods at the Fortune Theatre), Barnie Duncan, Laughton Kora and Hayley Sproull were the lucky souls to give it a try.
It took many rehearsals during which each part of the show was broken down and then built up.
''It's a huge complex machine. The performers literally sprint from one end of the stage to the other doing sound effects while having a romantic conversation. There's a lovely juxtaposition, like a swan who looks beautiful above the water but below its legs are cycling wildly.''
The audience can look up at the movie playing serenely on a screen and then look below and ''see the absolute madness of four performers going at break-neck speed''.
That includes creating a man-eating plant without a man-eating plant.
''They have to make the sound of someone being eaten; it's another layer which makes it fun to watch.''
Making those sounds is ''surprisingly hard'' to get it just right and in perfect timing with what is happening in the movie.
''It has to be believable that if you were watching the big screen it sounds exactly like it would.''
Coll said if anyone made a mistake there was no way to stop the film.
''If you stuff up you have to fix it somewhere down the line.''
He described the show as ''crazy different'' requiring a ''mad dash rush'' of its actors.
Reaction from audiences to the work, which premiered last year and won an Award of Excellence at the 2015 Auckland Theatre Awards, had been good, he said.
It has since toured extensively in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, including to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Barbican London, The Sage Gateshead, Galway Arts Festival and Darwin Festival.
''People haven't seen anything like it. They don't know where to watch.''
Theatre Review described it as ''like watching a subtitled movie where the subtitles have come alive and are more entertaining than the movie''.
While a review of its performance at the Barbican said: ''The voices perfectly encapsulated the characters and the effects were ingenious. A buzz saw served as a dentist's drill. The munching of cornflakes stood in for someone eating a flower.''
Driver said while orchestras have redone the music of old movies and some comedy films redubbed, he had never seen a movie done quite like Little Shop of Horrors, enhancing the original.
Added to all the chaos the actors are encouraged to be a bit ''naughty'' and to clown around.
''They're encouraged to try and mess with each other to make their job harder on top of it all.
''They try and make it as hard as possible for each other.''
It had become quite a game for the cast and was always done in the spirit of fun.
''It keeps it bright and live and fun.''
