Dracula – Nina’s revenge

I’ve been working with theatre companies for many years and I always enjoy the challenge of creating something new. Theatre allows a degree of creativity that’s not so common in some of my other more commercial work and suits my vision to a tee.

Creating a teaser image for the National Theatre’s production of Dracula had one big challenge. As is often the case with theatre projects early on, the main character wasn’t cast but we still needed an image. So how to show a character without showing who it was? A lot of options we looked at involved casting shadows or using movement but all of them I felt would give a rather vague and weak image. Then I remembered a personal series of images I shot 2 years ago using fine plastic sheeting. I showed these to the theatre and the director liked the route. We then looked at a means to suggest a bat and found a library image of one that’s backlit and shows the wings in a beautiful way. I combined the two and cast overlay are colour to add a sense of drama to the image and we found our final shot.

I make this process all sound quite straight forward but it wasn’t and never is. There’s a lot of stumbling around in the dark and worry. I know that that the stumbling around is an essential part of the process but I struggle with the fact that I do find that part stressful. Usually the more stressful and stumbling around I have to do to get there, the better the final image. if only I could get there without all the worry and stress, after all it always works out and that worry is for nothing. This is one of the reasons I speak to students and tell them to face their fears and not be put off by them, it’s a normal part of the creative process. After all these years I still struggle with the stress of it all but recognise it doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I think a lot of the benefits in our lives come when we face our fears and push against that. that’s how we grow.