The creative team decided early on that projection would be an important visual and storytelling element of the overall design of Big Fish on Broadway. “That is a function of this story being cinematic,” notes projection designer Benjamin Pearcy. “It requires a lot of changes of time and place that aren’t really practical to actually do. We rely on projection to create those images of time and location. Also, the notion of Edward Bloom as a storyteller plays a big part, so we have to create these fantasy worlds that are woven from the stories he tells, and that lends itself to using projection.”
Pearcy appreciated scenic designer Julian Crouch’s consideration of projections in the scenic design. “He did some initial renderings that showed how the set would be projected on, and we used those renderings and deconstructed them so that we project onto the set as he had rendered,” says Pearcy. “Then there are other sequences that we created from scratch. The cave is an example of a world that started out as an idea that was texture and color, and we transformed that into the animated result that the audience sees.”
To realize the projection design fully, Pearcy also collaborated with sound, lighting, and costumes. As he describes, “There was a very fruitful and omni-directional collaboration in terms of the overlap of what we were doing with projection, what Julian was doing scenically, what Don [Holder] was doing with the lighting, and even what Jon Weston and William Ivey Long were doing. Like with the Witch’s cape, we knew early on that we wanted to project on that costume, so I had a series of meetings with William, going through swatches at the shop to find a balance between a fabric that was good to project on but also that would look good on a person.”
He continues, “Same thing with Jon Weston doing the sound. There are a lot of times where we have animated content. If it runs on its own without any audio support—like if the cave moves, and there is no sound of stones moving—it doesn’t work. It just hangs out there on its own. When Jon adds a layer of sound to it, it really becomes a part of the bigger piece of the overall show.”
For Holder, the projection-heavy set posed an interesting challenge. “Don came to me early on and said, ‘I am not used to not lighting the set,’” says Pearcy. “We made sure we talked continually through the process; there was a lot of back and forth throughout, sort of on-the-fly collaboration. From the beginning, we had conversations about big projection moments—the flood, the Witch number—that would be supported by some sort of animation or projection, but a lot of it was the two of us working through things as we went along.”
All of the projection is front-projected. There’s not an LED panel to be found, even though the majority of the backdrop is projection. Pearcy had to work out how to maintain alignment. “We use four projectors, but that’s just to get the little bit of extra coverage, mainly for the river. Primarily, we are using two projectors from the front. Each plane from front to back requires its own alignment of those two projectors. If we line up content on the front surface, by the time we get to the back surface, it is no longer aligned. The biggest challenge was working out how to do that alignment efficiently. We used a [High End] Catalyst media server, which has a feature called exact mapping. That allowed us to create regions of geometry that we could adjust on both projectors. Essentially, there are two sets of elements: mixes, which are groups of layers of content, and then within those mixes, we can also have regions that have their own geometry. It was a process of figuring out how to stack all of those things in the right way so we are able to project the final image depending on the configuration of the scenery.”
The projection equipment, supplied by Sound Associates, includes Panasonic 21K projectors. “The great thing about Panasonic projectors, besides being reliable and very bright, is that they are quiet,” Pearcy states. “We hung these projectors on a balcony rail and did not build enclosures. Also they have an extremely high contrast ratio, so the difference between white and black is significant, giving them a much higher perceived brightness. Another nice thing is that the shutter that closes on them lets you actually set a time on how fast it opens and closes, so we don’t have to do any tricks like on ones that just snap on and off.”
Every show is a collaboration of the creative team, but this one really fostered that. Crouch explains, “It was the kind of show that not one designer could solve on his own. I feel that our working together was very important and is reflected in the cohesive design of the show.”