Projection designer Nina Dunn is the creative director at PixelLux and has worked internationally on some of the most innovative shows. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including Broadway World UK Award (Best Video Design); A Knight of Illumination Award (Video and Electronic Content), a Great British Pantomime Award (Best Design), and a LIT Award, she is also the founder of the Video and Digital Design module at RADA and lectures at Rose Bruford College.
Dunn recently worked on Kenneth Branagh's production of King Lear at The Shed in New York, after designing the original in London's West End. She talked to Live Design about finding her calling on Sunday In The Park With George, the importance of wide cultural references, and how the production at The Shed is expansive, but also feels like it was discovered during an archeological dig.
Live Design: Why did you chose to make a career in design for live events and when did you get the video design bug?
Nina Dunn: I can certainly pinpoint when I got the bug - and well put! It was working on a production of Sondheim’s Sunday In the Park With George at Studio 54 in 2008 as Timothy Bird’s associate. I knew what my job title had to be and set myself to work towards it.
I originally trained in broadcast design and animation (which was how I met Tim). I had always been interested in the interplay between surface and image and was keen to push my work beyond the bounds of a single square screen and started to do so in more commercial spheres. That, combined with a keen but to date more passive interest in theatre and music drew me to this line of work.
Projection design was a nascent profession when I started: it was beginning to be incorporated more widely into theatre shows and becoming more accessible with a more formalized workflow following the advent of the media server. It felt like a far cry from the technical challenges faced by the early pioneers in video art: my generation had the beginnings of a tangible workflow that we could start to rely on and adapt on a show-by-show basis.
Coming back to Sunday, it felt like a show that was crying out to be told with the help of projections design, as did the score of the first show I designed on my own - Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten - with its references to travel, fire, magic, floods. I honestly sometimes feel like I was born at the right time in the universe: in a time when technology and art can collide.
LD: You studied at Goldsmiths, Edinburgh and Universität der Künste. Did you study lighting/production/media design or did you study something else before moving into design?
ND: Actually my first degree was in Languages (with Philosophy) at Edinburgh. I always wanted to do art but coming from a family of doctors and engineers, I somehow felt I needed to do a ‘proper’ degree first. But of course my favorite part of that course was having the chance to learn about European art, literature and philosophy. The languages have certainly helped me, especially working in European opera, but I really found my feet when I studied fine art in Berlin then ‘converted’ that portfolio into more digitally focused areas such as photography and film at Goldsmiths for my MA in Image & Communication. Looking back, I suppose storytelling has always been a thread running through my studies although I studied art, I struggle to think of myself as an artist - I am an applied artist using space and light in service of the story.
LD: How do you stay up to date on the latest technology and skills?
I am lucky: I have a wide variety of projects coming my way and each show/event seems to require a new approach. I work alongside my team at PixelLux and in particular with Harrison Cooke - our technical Director and Creative Technologist - to brainstorm the best approach when faced with fresh challenges. We’re like two sides of a coin.
In addition to this, I have always taught and mentored in my field and I find it’s a wonderful two way street/ideas exchange - I bring my years of experience, navigation of politics, established practices and useful hacks and students who in turn bring fresh energy, fresh eyes and fresh approaches.
Also, working internationally you get to discuss alternative ways of doing things with new collaborators - for example on King Lear, Andrew Gusciora, my programmer/engineer and I were often comparing notes on various approaches.
There is also a brilliant online Discord community called ‘Videodesigncommunity’, founded by Ash J Woodward, that provides a great forum for ideas exchange and meeting people within the industry. In fact that’s the way I met my associate for Lear, Claire Talbott. We needed someone last minute and within 24 hours we had met and she was on the job!
LD: What appealed to you about teaching at RADA and Rose Bruford? What advice do you give to students joining the industry?
ND: When I started out there was nowhere to learn this profession but slowly things have changed and more institutions are offering formal training. I was proud to be part of setting up several of these courses along the way. I first became involved in teaching because a student saw my work and requested that I come to mentor him and I found it so extremely rewarding: wowing students with small scale demos whilst helping them learn how to formalize their workflow and avoid some of the possible pitfalls of working in live video. I have stayed in touch with many students and some have even become employees at PixelLux. I still believe that one of the best ways to learn is on the job - you can absorb far more information from living and breathing the thing than through theory - but you do need a foundation of theory in order to gain access to understand what is going on! It helps that I talk to myself when my brain gets too busy in tech :)
My advice to students would be go and shadow as many active professionals as possible and learn from their different approaches before putting yourself in the firing line on one of your own designs. Also, gather a great team around you and don’t try and do it all yourself!
LD: What attracted you to the production of King Lear at The Shed?
ND: I was super honored to be asked to meet with Ken in relation to his Lear. I have always respected his work and of course I knew of his connection to RADA. Naturally the story itself as one of Shakespeare’s finest works and drew me in from the start and I thought what he was planning to do with the production sounded really interesting but after a very positive and fast-paced first meeting where we connected on many levels including as fellow filmmakers, I would have been satisfied enough just knowing that he and I had a fantastic creative connection without even getting the gig. Thankfully, he felt I was a good fit so the journey started. I was already familiar with the work of the designer, Jon Bausor, (set and costume designer for this production) from an exhibit we were both participating in and was keen to work with him. We had a similarly sparky initial chat so the aesthetic synergies were there. Often it is really about the dynamic of the people making a thing that is everything in its success.
LD: Kenneth Branagh said in an interview that The Shed is, “an open, dynamic, modern, clean, inviting space and I think it makes the storytelling very expansive.” What was it like designing in such a unique venue? Were there specific challenges at The Shed?
ND: I loved working at The Shed. The space does indeed lend an expansiveness to the design, the luxury of which we did not have in the more enclosed end-on Wyndham’s Theatre where the show opened last Fall. It has somehow been released and elevated by its new setting and certain elements that were necessary in London have been trimmed back in order to distill the design. In a way it looks almost like it had been discovered there in an archeological dig.
The ceiling piece - with its central oculus - is where most of my work is concentrated in this iteration of the show. Achieving coverage of this surface has presented challenges because of the venue’s height but we managed to get our angle! We track the piece as it moves via automation feedback - it is beautifully engineered and runs in such a satisfying way - so we can tie animation perfectly to its movement and automatically keep up with any modifications that were being made during tech.
LD: How did the design change from its original run in London's Wyndham’s Theatre? Did you have different gear?
ND: Yes indeed. When I talk about distilling the design, as a result of the physical cuts, we also cut the New York rig down from our original seven projectors to just one single unit. I really embraced the more focused approach to the use of projection: previously there was an ambition to incorporate more figurative elements projected on the stone circle and the proscenium that we had in London but with the pace of the piece as it has been set there was no place to give these design interventions what they needed and they seemed superfluous when used simultaneously with the action. The show is run from a disguise media server - again specc’d down as we no longer use Notch for live audio-reactive effects so it’s probably the simplest rig I have had for years!
LD: What are your go-to pieces of gear or software?
ND: Coming from broadcast, I have always thought of content creation being a team effort. I have been taught never to limit my ideas to just the software and techniques I can master and instead to take an animator-art director approach so on any one job my content team will consist of varying skillsets ranging from 3D Unreal artists to stop-frame animators, DOPs, editors, coders etc depending on the show’s requirements. My personal skills lie in 2D animation and compositing so I most frequently use Adobe After Effects especially when it comes to creating the final composite for the ‘kit of parts’ the team makes for me. I also design in Notch and use AI via Streamdiffusion and TouchDesigner and I use Procreate for drawing. I even sometimes get out my paints too, which my kids love!
LD: What direction did you receive for this design? What were your main inspirations for the video content?
ND: The projection on the ceiling piece - often likened in its effect to an all-seeing eye - reflects the temperature of the scenes playing out below, tracking the building conflict both inside Lear’s head and on a wider scale with families and then empires at war. This starts during the prologue with a visual of the cosmos that brings us down to our planet and to ancient Albion (England). The visuals slowly intensify as the piece proceeds and peak with the well known storm scene where Lear is out on the moors raging against the elements. Here we use a a twisting vortex that counters the rotation of the stage revolve (turntable) to give the effect of a 360 camera move around Lear who is held in the eye of the storm.
The brief was initially discussed with Mr Branagh, then as he became more involved in rehearsals, I worked most closely with Jon Bausor, to explore what the pure language of the natural elements could bring to the story.
Occasionally we go under shelter into a ‘tent’ and here the projection is almost invisible - just supporting the scenic treatment to give the sense of solidity whilst also allowing projection to springboard off this tangibility into metaphor, for example, by adding a bloodshot stain around the gaping hole in the center to support the blinding of Gloucester. Here the projection renders the negative space that much darker by it presence.
LD: Where did you do most of your research for this production?
ND: It always starts with the text. Then on the basis of a familiarity with that material, in-depth conversations with the director around their take, their desires, and how I can help with this. I love getting to know great works of literature so intimately in this way! Next it is about interrogating the space as described by the design and working out how to push and pull emphasis and perspective on this. I also watched some of Branagh’s previous work - notably his Henry V - but I try to steer clear of watching previous versions of the actual text I am working with so as not to have that steer me.
LD: Do you have a favorite resource for your designs?
ND: No not really! I think it’s crucial to have a wide cultural frame of reference so that if someone mentions an artists such as Richard Serra or Constable you can immediately relate so visiting galleries, watching films, and following visual threads that intrigue you all help. I just find I have always simply looked at the world around me very hard!
LD: Branagh has also mentioned “sliding-door moments” in this production, where things change suddenly and the space was helpful in expanding these moments. As the video designer, how did you help create those moments?
ND: I feel like my work was very aligned to the work of Max Ringham, our composer/sound designer. He was doing a similar thing to me, in that he was making music from elemental sources to create an underscore for the show in the same way that my elemental use and evolution of the skies and motifs on the disc created a throughline of visual language. He and I found moments to underline— moments of crisis, shifts of power and impending danger by shifting emphasis in our visual and sonic underscore. We added speed/contrast/shifting color, but always in support of the action on stage. There is also a progression in the pace of transitions between scenes that ramps up during the piece and we were very careful to safeguard this between the London and New York productions.
LD: Can you share some cues from the production that you think work particularly well, and talk us through how you achieved them?
ND: I think the most involved piece of content was the prologue where we created the journey from the cosmos to ancient England. The journey was plotted against Max and Ben’s (Ringham brothers, sound designers and composers) musical intro in Cinema 4D then composited in After Effects. The moment I enjoy about this cue is when the automation of the ceiling starts part way through, just as the camera shows the underside of the earth, and there’s a lovely physical-meets-virtual moment where you as an audience member are not quite sure what is happening or how it’s achieved. Then the focus and perspective is shifted on the ceiling piece as Ken is revealed in backlight behind it. It’s certainly a dramatic way to make an entrance!
I have mentioned how we support the moment when Gloucester is robbed of his eyes of course. Another motif used by both sound and projection is the wash of waves at Dover. We use this motif spatially to signify fresh starts, departures, the coming and going of both enemy and friend and the erosion of power. It’s a simple looking effect but to fit with the spatial design it’s never as simple as one would think and requires spatial composing and timing to get the right effect, even if it is based on organic footage!
LD: What did you incorporate in your design from discussions with the lighting designer, Paul Keogan?
ND: We spoke a great deal about time of day at the start—in practical and emotional terms—and of course about color and key light direction. I am extremely sensitive to color so I find I am always the last one to lock the look I am creating when working with projection. It has to bed in with light to create a stage picture that makes sense, so I am either constantly tracking lighting changes or in dialogue with them about content that has a pre-defined look to discuss how we can pull together to create a seamless whole. Paul has created some incredibly dynamic lighting on stage so I needed to make sure that the balance and shape of the content supported this which was sometimes challenging, given how dominant and symmetrical the ceiling can feel in the space! After all I am working with light, too.
King Lear runs at The Shed in New York City until December 15.