Illuminations at St Martin-in-theFields, London
March 2021
The team at Nina Dunn Studio have been commissioned to design visuals to accompany a new performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Academy of St Martin’s as part of the Church’s Fresh Horizons concert series.
When Nina was asked to come up with a posisble visual accompaniment to the piece, she chose to revisit the rich and detailed illlustrations found in the St John’s Bible and curate a new series of animation to accompany the music and bring the illumniations from the Bible to life. It’s been 10 years since we last worked with this amazing feat of craftsmanship that is contained within this recent edition of the Bible and the subject matter and style was so perfectly aligned, it seemed to be a match made in heaven.
The concert was designed to deliver a richer and fresher audience experience than a regular concert boradcast (no audience were present due to COVID restrictions at the time of transmission) and Nina’s team, led by Harrison Cooke, were also tasked to suppy the broadcast camera set up and provide the vision mix, edit and grade for the streamed concert.
This full-service approach was vital to ensure that the storytelling in both the music and by performers as well as within the visuals was richly represented.
We brought on board Sebastian Frost to provide sound design and engineering. His work was extraordinarily effective and delieved a better-than-there experience by using binaural recording with every player and singer individually recorded with their own microphone.
On a personal level, it was a very unique priviledge to be in a space with live music after such a long silence. It felt like we were playing and illuminating just for ourselves at times, which was very strange, but what a joy to be able to share this piece with an audience far beyond the walls of the church in the end.
You can watch an excerpt from the broadcast here:
FULL CREDITS
Performers
Carolyn Sampson Soprano
James Way Tenor
Benson Wilson Baritone
St Martin’s Voices
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Conductor Andrew Earis
Design Nina Dunn
Video Engineers Harrison Cooke and Matt Summerville
Sound Design Sebastian Frost
Animators Nina Dunn, Matt Brown, Ana Stefaniak, Ravi Swami, Alex Forey
Show caller Jen Raith
Camera Director Harrison Cooke
Video Equipment Supplier Blue-i Theatre Technology
Camera Operators Matt Somerville
Sound Operator John Del Nero
Video Editor Nina Dunn
Producer Andrew Earis
Poduction Team
Emily Granozio Charlotte Marino Cathy Martin Caroline Molloy Charlotte Pringle