Digital Media, Projection Design, and Technology for Theatre

Digital Media, Projection Design, and Technology for Theatre covers the foundational skills, best practices, and real-world considerations of integrating digital media and projections into theatre. The authors, professional designers and university professors of digital media in live performance, provide readers with a narrative overview of the professional field, including current industry standards and expectations for digital media/projection design, its related technologies and techniques. The book offers a practical taxonomy of what digital media is and how we create meaning through its use on the theatrical stage.

The book outlines the digital media/projection designer’s workflow into nine unique phases. From the very first steps of landing the job, to reading and analyzing the script and creating content, all the way through to opening night and archiving a design. Detailed analysis, tips, case studies and best practices for crafting a practical schedule and budget, to rehearsing with digital media, working with actors and directors, to creating a unified design for the stage with lighting, set, sound, costumes, and props is discussed.

The fundamentals of content creation, detailing the basic building blocks of creating and executing digital content within a design is offered in context of the most commonly used content creation methods, including: photography and still images, video, animation, real-time effects, generative art, data and interactive digital media. Standard professional industry equipment, including media servers, projectors, projection surfaces, emissive displays, cameras, sensors, etc. is detailed. The book also offers a breakdown of all key related technical tasks such as converging, warping, and blending projectors, to calculating surface brightness/luminance, screen size and throw distance, to using masks, warping content and projection mapping, making this a complete guide to digital media and projection design today.

A companion website offers an interactive timeline of the history and important milestones in projection design, sample assets, and interviews that link to current and relevant work of leading projection designers.

Alex Oliszewski is the Assistant Professor of Media Design for Live Performance & Installation at The Ohio State University. He specializes in theatrical media design + devising. He has presented at SETC and USITT on projection design and technology.

Daniel Fine designs projections and systems for theatre, dance, music and interactive installations. By combining the simple, traditional forms of storytelling with that of digital media, he collaborates on large scale and intimate experiences in order to engage the imaginations and hearts of a twenty-first century audience. Daniel is an assistant professor of Digital Media in Performance, with a co-appointment in Theatre Arts and Dance and is a core faculty member of the Public Digital Arts Cluster at the University of Iowa. He received an MFA in interdisciplinary digital media for performance from Arizona State University.

Daniel Roth is an Adjunct Professor of Media Design, University of California San Diego. His experience and interests include creative design and production, project management, and digital media technology. Projects have included holographic displays, large-scale projection mapping, mobile video applications, and interactive art pieces.