Moonlight Youth Theatre Projections Design

I’ve had the pleasure of designing two productions now for Moonlight Youth Theatre; Freaky Friday in 2019, and Little Women in 2021, bookends to the 2020 COVID Pandemic. Enjoy below some features of each project.

Freaky Friday, the Disney Musical adaptation of the movie franchise, is a cute, over the top family comedy interrupted by a magical object. Due to the supernatural and exaggerated writing style, we opted for a comic book style, taking stock elements and modifying them to fit the sets and settings, and then using a series of rasterized effects in Adobe Photoshop turned them into comic book feel.

Sticking with that coming book motif; during transitions between major locations, I chose to pay homage to the Marvel intro with a short animation into scenes. Splitting the projections into different “panels” to break up separate locations/times. Careful animation to highlight certain moments, such as a pink bloom effect when the lead character is overcome with “biological” feelings. Even swaying into the ridiculous to cause the head of the romantic interest to bounce across the screen in a rather ridiculous song entitled “Women and Sandwiches.” To sell the idea in the script that the “clues” during a scavenger hunt late in the show were coming via text message, grounding this fanciful play in the tactile realities of every day. All created with Adobe After Effects and was operated via QLab.

Overall I think we matched the tone and created a truly enjoyable production both for the audiences of over 800+ per night, and for the children’s education and future.

Before the 2020 COVID Pandemic there was set to be another major production like Freaky Friday of the Broadway Musical “Little Women.” Unfortunately the show was postponed and in 2021 it was brought back for a one night only staged reading.

Due to the style of show, it was to be only my projections, and the actors themselves. So any settings, timeline, even specific actions and story beats were to be given by my projections.

To accomplish this I chose to use time appropriate references, recreate their pattens, wallpapers, etc. in Adobe Illustrator, and then model the “set pieces” in Blender, being careful to use minimal depth to give the effect, without being distracting.

Using a thoughtful mix of vector graphics in Adobe Illusrator, raster noise effects in Photoshop, 3D modeling and production in Blender, compositing and animation in After Effects, and even creating a custom convolution based “Kuwahara” filter in TouchDesigner. Bouncing between these allowed me the freedom to do some incredible compositing effects, such as vines growing on the edge of a recently animated scene piece, or animating in curtains to give a sense of realism, and then heighten the moment away from realism when the March sisters dreamed, via the dreamy oil-painting like “Kuwahara” filter.