Ride The Cyclone

Director: Morgan Hicks

Scene Design: Michael Riha 

Costume Designer: Heidi Decaluwe

Hair & Makeup Designer: Callie Lythgoe

Lighting Designer: Shawn Irish

Projections Designer: Austin Bomkamp

​

The Ride the Cyclone the musical was produced at the University of Arkansas Theater Department’s Global Campus Theater. I was the Projection Designer, and I produced a design that was projected onto the arch and curtain of the set design. Some of the content that was included in the design was images of the cast as they grew up through the lens of a old style super 8 film projector. This content was projected onto the curtain that was inside the arch. While that content was specified in the script I also created content that was fun and interesting that fit the theme on the arch its self. The process of this design included make digital masks in the software WATCHOUT to separate the content that is projected onto the different surfaces. The idea of recoding the cast as they rode a roller-coaster was theorized as content to be projected but could not be completed due to not having access to a Roller-coaster during the design process. The compromise was that we took photos of the cast and edited them to be on the roller-coaster. The images of the cast was projected onto the arch while a video of a roller-coaster played on the curtain in the arch.

One of the design challenges of this production happened about 3 days before the show opened, when the curtain finally arrived on site and was able to test it with projections. The curtain was created with a very textured and shiny surface causing the projections on it to nearly completely disappear. There was also the problem that the curtain had fullness, this means it was not a flat surface to project on. The process that we did to fix these problems was to turn the curtain backward and project on that side, this included resowing most of the curtain so that seams did not show. To deal with the fullness of the curtain we decided the best choice was to move some of the projection content so that it would not be on the curtain. While some of the content could not move we found out that it created some moments where the audience laughed due to misshapen faces
 

​

Photos Credit: Austin Bomkamp & Shawn Irish

​