CASE STUDY

Disguise powers Olivier
award-winning
Stranger Things“Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” thetheatrical prequel to the hit Netﬂix series“Stranger Things”, opened at the Phoenix
Theatre in London in December 2023.
In this case study you will discover how thevisually intensive production was the ﬁrst to use
the Disguise 10-bit workﬂow to cohesively drive
onstage HDR content displayed on an LED video
screen as well as content from almost a dozen
projectors.

www.disguise.one

Summary“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is an original playthat’s part of the canon of the extremely successful
Netﬂix series. Taking place in Hawkins 1959, the world
was brought to life by a multi-award winning creativeteam.
Directed by Stephen Daldry, co-directed by Justin
Martin, and written by Kate Trefry, the play is an original
story by the Duﬀer Brothers, Jack Thorn and Trefry,
serving as a prequel to the events of the televisionseries Stranger Things. 59 Productions was responsible
for the design, content production, programming, andcreative and technical commissioning of the show’s
video elements. The company needed to integrate withand collaborate across the video, lighting, sound andillusion departments to achieve spectacular visualeﬀects.
Working on a show with so many moving parts meant
the team needed a ﬂexible workﬂow for the designers tospontaneously make changes during technicalrehearsals.

Image credits: Manuel Harlan

The challenge
It took more than three years for the production to getoﬀ the ground. R&D for the show began in 2020 withvideo eﬀects workshops underway during COVID, video
design starting in 2022 and tech rehearsals beginning in
October 2023, two months prior to the opening.
It was one of the most technically complicated showsthat 59 Productions has ever been involved with,requiring numerous projectors plus a large LED video
surface. The company needed to devise a workﬂow thatenabled everything to work seamlessly - a job Disguise
was born for.

Image credits: Manuel Harlan

The solution
59 Productions used Disguise’s 10-bit workﬂow,
featuring four GX 3 media servers and the OmniCalcamera-based projector calibration system. These tools
allowed the company to deploy almost a dozen
projectors and a large LED video surface cohesively
while also keeping the large complement of projectorsaligned.
Disguise Multi-user sessions allowed their team to makethe most of the allotted time – a tool that Disguise does
better than anybody else. People could make changes
to diﬀerent elements on stage simultaneously and atother points in the timeline.
Additional ﬂexible elements and toolsets, such as
Disguise Expressions, permitted the creation of custom
tools that simpliﬁed workﬂows.

Image credits: Manuel Harlan

59 PRODUCTIONS“Disguise supported us well inthe tech process when we had
a dedicated channel with themand they responded on a dailybasis.
The Disguise team also worked
closely with us to address bothbugs and feature requests andgave us new builds of thesoftware throughout, which
helped us stay on track.”
Ben Pearcy
CTO

Image credits: Manuel Harlan

Results
The show opened to positive reviews and continues toenjoy wide critical acclaim, winning the 2024 Olivier
Award for Best Entertainment as well as Best Set andVideo Design, a crowning representation of the highly
technical, spectacular visual eﬀects achieved by theteam at 59 Productions. The show has also justannounced that it will be extending it's run at the WestEnd's Phoenix Theatre until February 2025.
It proved the eﬃcacy of implementing the Disguise
10-bit workﬂow on a theatrical production of greatcomplexity, which required both extensive projection
and LED video displays. Disguise GX 3 media servers
and OmniCal oﬀered users speed and ﬂexibility from therehearsal process to the mission-critical driving ofcontent at every performance.

Image credits: Manuel Harlan

Disguise equipment used

OMNICALGX3

Our camera-based projector
calibration system, OmniCal,
quickly captures a point cloud ofyour projection surface andaccurately calibrates projectors.

The GX 3 is the most powerfuland versatile disguise machine todate, unlocking new potential ingenerative graphics thanks to its
GPU’s processing capabilities.

Find out more

Find out more

In Partnership withProject Director: Leo Warner
Associate Project Director: Ben Pearcy
Lead Video Designer: Tom Wexler
Video Designer: Matt Taylor
Animators: Jason Devine, Emily Howells,
Jarek Radecki, Nicol Scott, Edd Stockton,
Laurent de Vleeshouwer, Lawrence Watson
Producer: Teya Lanzon
Video Programmer: Liam Daly
Video System Design: Richard Wells
Lead Video Engineers: Mogzi, Alex Ramsden

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