How Kate Dawkins Studio uses Previz to share their vision
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Visual design specialists Kate Dawkins Studio have built a reputation around their delivery of ambitious live events and immersive experiences for the Platinum Jubilee, Elton John and the Olympic Games. Their expertise in video design and projection mapping to implement grand spectacles has won them several awards, including two BAFTAs. To realise their ambitious vision, they use Disguise’s Previz tools. We sat down with studio founder and Creative Director, Kate Dawkins to understand the role previsualization plays in her creative process.
Facilitating bold new ideas
Previsualization tools offer opportunities to prepare exciting projects and better comprehend the challenges and solutions that your team will face before you undertake final delivery. For many, this means extensive experimentation during the final planning stages of a project. But for Dawkins, the opportunity to use the tool is there from the very conception of each project.
“There’s a wonderful moment at the beginning of a project where anything is possible,” Dawkins says. “People are sharing ideas and experimenting, and everything is exciting but not everything is achievable, because at this stage you're still understanding the context and canvas”
For Dawkins’ team, Disguise Previz is the first step towards understanding which ideas might work, and which need to be radically revised or dropped entirely. When it comes to delivering a digital twin of the building or space being used for a given project, Previz empowers teams to make quick decisions. This is all accessible in Disguise Cloud which, according to Dawkins, “makes it a really collaborative process, enabling everyone to see what is working, what doesn’t work, and what needs further development. This allows us to work with only the best ideas, ultimately saving time, and also helps guide client expectations.”
Sharing your vision
Previz offers much more to client relations than simply tempering ambitions, though. In the early stages, it represents a decision-enabling tool that allows teams to mock up different options before committing to a final choice.
As the project develops, these previsualizations offer reassurance to clients. This can be valuable in an area where access to the physical location is limited and proof of concept might otherwise not be seen until days before the event itself.
When Kate Dawkins Studio was working with the BBC Studio Events to present elaborate illuminations on Ypres Cloth Hall, it was important to be able to offer a level of security to their client. A memorial projection in remembrance of the Battle of Passchendaele, the project was incredibly sensitive, and the ability to reassure the BBC about developments proved key.
Being able to show the client something that looks so realistic, even at the earliest points of the production, was invaluable. Our client was so impressed, that we could offer this realistic tool, which made them feel like they were there. This built huge amounts of confidence in what was a highly ambitious project.
Founder and Creative Director, Kate Dawkins Studio
Delivering technical solutions
For Dawkins, Previz was initially conceived as a tool to serve a very practical purpose. As powerful as it is for engaging clients and investors, and visualising exciting new ideas, it is ultimately made to offer a real impact on the development of projects.
For Kate Dawkins Studio’s Passchendaele project, the technical challenge at hand came from the very location itself - two walls of the 125 metre-long Cloth Hall in Ypres. The space offered a complex canvas - highly-detailed medieval architecture on two faces, each of which were drastically different in size and required projection in separate resolutions that would need to be aligned perfectly.
With Disguise’s Previz, these challenges were simple to deal with. Every consideration, from the projection mapping to the position of projectors could be planned in advance and tested within the programme. When the final event was a roaring success, it was of no surprise to the team at Kate Dawkins Studio who had been visualizing it for months.