In this interview segment, the speaker clarifies the distinction between a projectionist—a technician focused on operating, maintaining, calibrating, and repairing physical projectors—and a projection designer, a creative professional who designs and programs repeatable, cueable video effects for any visual display surface. The term "projection designer" is formally recognized by the USA 829 scenic design union, a recent development that has led to standardized billing, healthcare, and title agreements over the past few years. The speaker notes that the role may also be called video or media designer, but prefers "projection designer" because it encompasses work on projectors, LED screens, televisions, monitors, and even iPads or iPhones used on stage. The core function is projecting visual ideas onto surfaces, regardless of the technology. The speaker expresses a personal preference for projection due to its ability to instantly wrap images around objects, yet cites an upcoming project involving routing video to 20 monitors, illustrating that the title remains applicable even without traditional projectors.
Chapters
Projectionist. When you see that, what does that mean when you look in the playbill and it says the projectionist? Well, that's an interesting point of terminology there. A projectionist is usually a technician who interacts specifically with a projector, and it's not necessarily a designer. Projectionist is specifically, and there's a union of projectionists, is specifically people who maintain, configure, calibrate, repair and are brilliant at using the actual physical object of a projector, and that is interacting technically with it. Not that they don't have design, or, or not that they don't do creative things, more that it's, um, it's a little bit similar to the difference between a director of photography and a camera operator. There's overlap, and in certain productions you might do both, or people might have shared knowledge, but a projection designer, which is what we are called, that's the term that USA 829, the scenic design, scenic artists union, uses to define what we do. That's fairly new. That is fairly new. That's right. It's only in the last several years that it's been a category for which you could join. There are new there are new agreements every year concerning projection designers. Everything that the designers before us have gone through, title billing and healthcare and all of those things, they're all becoming more standardized and on par with the other designers. That is really, really new in the last 3 or 4 years. 4 or 5 years. And that's the, that's the term that's used to describe what we do, whether or not we're using an actual projector. You would use a projection designer. Sometimes they call them video designers or they call them media designers. I use the term projection designer. I like that phrase. We use it anytime, anytime there's an LED screen with video content or televisions or monitors with video content or projectors, of course. Sometimes I've been called in to do effects that happen on an iPad or an iPhone. Like sometimes it'll be a specific thing needs to happen on someone's iPad on a stage and the person who programs that, because we, you know, we use video technology and it's cueable, it sort of falls into what we do, which is repeatable cueable video effects. And whatever the, source of that is, whatever the end, the final screen on or surface on which you see the video content, doesn't exactly matter. We still use a projection designer. One way I've heard it described is that we are projecting visual ideas onto a surface. Whether you use a projector or you're using a VCR and a television, that idea is still translating a visual movement idea into virtual or physical things you see on stage. So my preferred medium is projectors. I like projection. I like the way you can sort of, you can take an image and wrap it around an object and you can sort of coat the walls instantaneously with it. My favorite type of screen is a set itself. But I have a project coming up that will use 20 monitors and we're going to be routing video to the 20 screens on stage and there may or may not be any projectors at all in that. But I'll be called projection designer and that's, it's not exactly a literal expression, but I think it's an accurate expression. Mm-hmm.
