What a projected backdrop cannot do that a painted one can

By Joey Calkins · Section Projection

Projection replaced painted scenery in a great many productions for reasons that are entirely sound: it changes, it travels light, it can be rewritten on the Thursday. What it does not do is behave like a painted cloth, and the differences are physical rather than aesthetic.

Paint lives in the lighting state. An image sits in front of it

A painted cloth is a reflective object in the same room as the performers. Light the stage warm and the cloth goes warm with it. Bring the state down and the cloth comes down too, at the same rate, because the same photons are doing both jobs. It belongs to the picture in a way that requires no effort from anyone.

A projected image is generated independently. Stage light does not tint it, it only dilutes it, which is the mechanism described in the article on ambient light: every wash that touches the surface raises the floor and drains the picture. You cannot light a projection. You can only fail to light it.

Two limits, pointing in opposite directions

Paint cannot be brighter than the light falling on it. A painted window at dusk is dark cloth pretending, and the pretence depends on the audience's eye being adapted to a dim stage.

Projection cannot be darker than the light falling on it. A projected night sky in a lit scene is grey, and no adjustment recovers it. Each medium has a hard boundary and they are on opposite sides, which is why the same designer will reach for different ones in the same production.

Surface, and what raking light finds

Paint has texture. Brush marks, scumbling, the weave of the cloth and the physical relief of appliqué all catch light from the side and cast their own tiny shadows, and that microscopic shadowing is a large part of why a painted surface reads as a made object at forty metres.

A projection surface is deliberately smooth, and the image on it is luminance without relief. Raking light finds nothing to model because there is nothing there. The image can depict texture; it cannot have any.

Depth is layers, and layers are physical

Scenic tradition builds distance out of separated planes: cut cloths, borders, gauzes, a painted backing behind them. As the audience's attention moves, or as a performer crosses, the planes shift against each other slightly and the eye reads real depth because there is real depth.

A single projection surface has one plane. Perspective painted into the image is fixed to one viewpoint, which is roughly the centre of the house, and everywhere else it is subtly wrong. Multiple projection surfaces at different distances restore the effect and bring back the alignment problems described in the article on mapping.

What each medium leaves behind

A painted cloth is an object. It can be rolled, stored, hired to another company, repainted on the back, photographed, exhibited and looked at in fifty years by someone who was not born when it was made. Scenic art collections exist for that reason.

A projection design is a set of files, a cue stack and a server configuration, and it is subject to the same preservation problem described in the article on lighting plots: the format outlives nothing in particular, and the machine that played it is discontinued. A revival of a projection-heavy production frequently means remaking the content rather than reinstalling it.

Every seat sees the same painted cloth

Reflected paint looks broadly the same from anywhere in the house. A projection surface has gain, and gain is directional: brightness, evenness and sometimes colour vary with where the viewer is sitting. The image assessed from the production desk is not the image the corner of the circle receives.

What projection genuinely does better

Change. Twelve locations in an evening, weather, time passing, text, a face at scale. Motion of any kind. Late alterations that cost an afternoon rather than a fortnight in a paint frame. Touring weight measured in flight cases rather than in cloths. And spectacle in the literal sense: light emitted at the audience, which paint cannot do at all.

The choice is therefore not which is better but which limit the production can live inside. A show that needs one place, lit many ways, is asking for paint. A show that needs many places is asking for projection, and should expect to spend the darkness to get them.

What we cannot verify

Claims about the visual quality of particular projection surfaces or scenic paint systems come from the companies selling them. Comparative cost figures depend entirely on scale, labour rates and country, and the frequently repeated assertion that projection is cheaper than built scenery is a generalisation that fails as often as it holds; the comparison has to be made for the specific production. We have not measured either medium.