Module 10 — Projection Basics

Projection in school theatre — when it adds, when it distracts

Projection used to be a luxury — a domain of professional theatre, opera houses, and very well-funded community productions. In 2026, it isn't. Most Australian schools already own at least one classroom projector capable of producing usable stage projection, and the cost of additional 4000-lumen LED projectors has dropped under A$1,500.

This has created a strange situation: schools have the technical capacity to do projection in productions, but rarely use it well. Either it gets bolted on as an afterthought ("let's project the city skyline behind Act 2") or it dominates the design with so many cues that it competes with the actors instead of supporting them.

This module is about the practical decisions that determine whether projection ADDS to a production or SUBTRACTS from it. Specifications, content preparation, throw distance, mapping basics, and the most-overlooked thing: deciding when NOT to use projection.

When projection works

Projection earns its place in a production when it accomplishes one of these specific jobs:

Establishing location. A line of text on a black screen — "Paris, 1789" — replaces three pages of expository dialogue.
Showing the unseeable. Stars in space, fish in an ocean, dreams, memories, characters who can't physically be on stage (a video letter from a deceased character).
Scaling up the world. A massive cityscape behind a small kitchen scene reminds the audience of the wider stakes.
Time-shifting. Showing the same character at different ages, simultaneous scenes in different places, or time-of-day shifts (sunrise → noon → sunset).
Replacing a physical element you can't afford. A pre-recorded fire crackles on the hearth rather than building a practical fire effect.

When projection doesn't work

It fails when it's redundant with what's already happening on stage. If you have a strong actor delivering a soliloquy about loss, and behind them you're projecting clouds in a grey sky — you're competing with the actor for the audience's attention. The audience either watches the actor (and you've spent money on projection nobody's watching) or watches the projection (and you've undermined your strongest asset).

It also fails when the technical execution is wrong: low contrast against the stage lighting, off-axis distortion, audible projector fan noise during quiet scenes, or content that's clearly amateur (low-resolution images, mismatched aspect ratios, distracting transitions).

The "one second test" Any projection cue should be designed so that a casual audience member glancing at the screen for one second can understand what they're seeing. If they need to read text, the text must be readable from the back row in under two seconds. If it's an image, the focal point must be clear. Cues that require sustained attention compete with the actors. Cues that pass the one-second test support them.

Projector specifications — what actually matters

School projectors are usually rated for classrooms — daylight viewing, 2000-3500 lumens, 1024×768 or 1920×1080 native resolution. These work for some stage projection but fail in three common scenarios: large stages (over 8m wide), competing with strong stage lighting, and rear-projection setups.

The key specifications:

Spec	What it means	School production minimum
Brightness (lumens)	Light output. More = visible in brighter conditions.	4000 ANSI lumens for a 6m wide stage. 6000+ for larger.
Native resolution	Pixel grid. Higher = sharper image, less pixelation up close.	1920×1080 (Full HD) minimum. 4K only if budget allows.
Contrast ratio	Difference between darkest black and brightest white.	10,000:1 minimum. Lower than this looks washed-out under stage light.
Throw ratio	How far the projector sits from the screen to produce a given image width. Short-throw = closer = less audience-blocking.	1.0-1.5:1 for most school stages.
Lens shift	Ability to move the image up/down/sideways without moving the projector physically. Essential for clean rectangles when the projector isn't dead-centre.	Vertical AND horizontal shift, both ≥40%.
Keystoning	Software correction for off-axis projection. Don't rely on this — it degrades the image quality.	Use sparingly. Lens shift is the real fix.
Bulb hours	How many hours the lamp lasts before replacement.	LED projectors (20,000+ hour) preferred over UHP lamps (2000-3000h) for production reliability.

Throw distance — the most-misunderstood concept

"Throw distance" is the distance from the projector's lens to the screen. It's controlled by:

The projector's throw ratio (specified by manufacturer, typically 1.0-2.0 for standard projectors, 0.4-0.8 for short-throw, <0.4 for ultra-short-throw)
The desired image width on the screen

Throw distance = throw ratio × image width.

For a 4m-wide projection image on a school stage using a typical 1.4:1 throw-ratio projector: throw distance = 1.4 × 4 = 5.6 metres. The projector needs to sit 5.6m back from the projection surface.

If your stage doesn't have 5.6m of clearance behind the projection surface, you have three options:

Short-throw projector (0.4-0.8 throw ratio) — gets you the same 4m image in 2-3m of throw distance. About double the cost of a standard projector.
Rear projection — projector sits behind a translucent screen, projecting through it. Audience sees the image without the projector being in their line of sight. Requires special screen material + dedicated stage depth.
Ultra-short-throw projector (<0.4 throw ratio) — projects from less than 1m. Increasingly common, increasingly affordable. Best for tight spaces.

Audience-line projection trap School auditoriums commonly hang projectors from the rear of the audience — which puts the projector beam directly through the audience's heads + sight lines. Anyone standing up blocks the image. People in front rows of the balcony often have the projector beam at eye level. If your venue has this configuration, consider rear projection or short-throw front-mounted instead.

Content preparation

This is where school projections most consistently fail. The content was prepared at the wrong aspect ratio, the wrong resolution, the wrong colour space, with the wrong format — and looks amateurish on stage even when the projector is good.

Aspect ratio

Match your content's aspect ratio to your projector's native ratio. Most modern projectors are 16:9 (HD widescreen). If your content is 4:3 (older / academic), you'll get pillar-boxed images with black bars on the sides. Worse: content prepared in mixed ratios stretches actors' faces in B-roll or compresses backgrounds.

Build a TEMPLATE in your content tool (PowerPoint, Keynote, Resolume, QLab) at exactly your projector's native resolution. All cues use that template.

Resolution + bitrate

Image files: minimum 1920×1080 pixels (matching Full HD projectors). If your projector is 4K, prepare at 3840×2160. Don't scale up — scaling small images to large displays creates pixelation. Use PNG for graphics with sharp edges, JPEG for photos.

Video files: prepare at the projector's native resolution and frame rate. 1080p, 25fps for AU broadcast standard. Bitrate 8-15 Mbps for good quality without enormous file sizes. Use H.264 codec (universally compatible) saved as .MP4.

Colour calibration

Projectors at default settings often have washed-out colours. Calibrate using a test pattern AT THE VENUE under ACTUAL stage lighting conditions, NOT in your prep room. The same image looks different on stage with house lights down + your stage's amber wash than it does in your office. Schedule 30 minutes of "projection state" time at tech rehearsal for this.

Pre-show pause frame

Always prepare a "pre-show" frame — a black frame, a logo, or the production title — that sits on screen during pre-show + intermission. Don't leave the projector showing whatever's last on screen (a credit slate from your prep, or worse, your operating-system desktop).

Mapping basics — beyond rectangles

"Projection mapping" is when projection is fitted to non-rectangular surfaces — a building face, a curved set piece, a sculpted prop, a face. For school productions this is rarely necessary, but when it is (the wedding scene where the church facade glows, the dream sequence where the actor's body is projected onto), the basics:

The mapping workflow

Photograph the surface from the EXACT angle and distance the projector will sit at. Use a tripod. This becomes your reference for content prep.
Mask the content to fit. In Photoshop / Resolume / MadMapper, define the mask that excludes anything outside the surface. The projector will still output a rectangle, but the masked content shows only on the surface.
Test at the venue. Mapping done at home looks wrong at the venue. The mask offsets, the surface texture catches light differently, the colour calibration changes. Budget 1-2 hours during tech for refinement.
Document the position. Mark exactly where the projector goes (taped X on the floor) and where the surface sits. If anything moves, the mapping breaks.

Tools

For school-budget mapping work:

MadMapper — A$300, the industry standard for mapping. Steep learning curve but powerful.
HeavyM — A$200, lighter learning curve, good for simple geometric mapping.
Resolume Avenue — A$420, can do mapping + video mixing in one tool. Overkill for simple cases but if you're also live-mixing, useful.
QLab Pro (Mac only) — A$1000, includes lightweight mapping as part of a broader cue-playback system. The most common school choice if you can afford it.

If you're trying mapping for the first time, do it for ONE small surface in a production — don't try to map the whole stage. Build confidence on one prop before attempting a building facade.

Operating during a show

The projection operator's job during a live show:

Sit in the booth or a side-stage position with sight line to the screen + headset to the SM
Cue playback software loaded with all content + cued to standby for the next cue
Listen for SM's "standby projection cue X" — confirm "standing by"
On "GO projection X" — trigger the cue
Watch the result. If something looks wrong (frozen frame, wrong cue triggered, content didn't load), communicate to SM IMMEDIATELY. Don't try to fix silently.

The single most common failure mode in school productions is the projection operator missing a cue because they didn't have headset comms. Don't run projection without headset comms to the SM. It's the cheapest insurance available.

Exercise 10.1 — Throw distance calculation + content prep

For your school's venue and projector:

Look up your projector's throw ratio in its manual (or measure: image width × throw distance = throw ratio).
For a 4m-wide image, calculate the required throw distance.
Check whether your venue has that clearance behind / in front of the screen.
If yes — great. If no — note which alternative (short-throw, rear, ultra-short-throw) is feasible for the space.

Then prepare a single test cue:

Find your projector's native resolution.
Create a single still image at that resolution, with a recognisable test pattern (gradient, text "TEST", colour bars).
Project it. Verify: edges are sharp (no chromatic aberration), colours are accurate (white is white, not yellow or blue), the image is a clean rectangle (no keystoning needed), and no part is cut off.
If any test fails, note which and decide: lens-shift fix, keystoning fix (last resort), or projector repositioning.

Knowledge check

Name three production jobs that projection does WELL. Then name two scenarios where projection competes with actors and shouldn't be used.
Your projector has a 1.5:1 throw ratio. You want a 5m-wide image. What's the required throw distance?
Why is keystoning a worse fix than lens shift?
What's the single most common preventable failure in school-production projection operations?
You're asked to "project clouds behind the actor's monologue." Walk through the questions you'd ask the director before agreeing.

📦 Resource pack

Throw-distance calculator (Excel + web JS version)
Content prep template (PowerPoint at standard projector resolutions)
Projection cue book template (matches Module 5 cue-book format)
Test pattern set (PNG files for colour calibration + sharpness check)
Common projector model spec sheet (BenQ, Epson, NEC — most-common AU school models with throw ratios)

← Module 9 (Wardrobe)

Take Module 10 quiz → Dashboard

▶ Video lessons

1. Heritage Projection Room

Read the transcript

Hi everyone and welcome to Easy Stagecraft, it's Daniel here and today is Feature Friday and we are looking at a heritage theatre today but as it was in 1921 when it was actually a cinema. Now this venue was built in 1921 and rebranded in 1972 when it was remodified and rebuilt. It used to be a three and a half thousand seat theatre with a beautiful proscenium arch and in 1972 the stalls were removed and a new stage was installed and a fly tower added to make room for drama and ballet space underneath where the stalls once were.

We're now going to go to this venue in today's day and age where all of the original projectors and scenic equipment are still sitting there as they were back in 1921, albeit a bit old now but I want to take you straight there so we can have a look at that. Hi everyone it's Daniel here from Easy Stagecraft, I'm at this heritage theatre and we're about to go and have a look at the projection room which is somewhere that not many people get the opportunity to go but the wonderful management here have been kind enough to let me have a look and the original projectors are still in place so let's go have a look. And we can see here that we're just following the venue's technician up to the projection room, we have to go through the foyer and there's a small door that wraps around to the outside of the building because the only way to get up to the Projection Room is actually via the roof and through some external doors so you can see just the narrowness of this little wooden staircase that we're going up near and in a minute we'll pop out onto the roof and we'll head into the projection room now and you see the technician just opening the door there and as we move in and come in just on our right you just see the old bits of film storage that are still present here in the room, there's some old reels, there's some old racks, there's a film vise there on the table in the corner and it really is as if this is just frozen in time and I absolutely love going into venues and seeing this history, some film vices and clamps there on the table and then the Projectors are just there, the old West Rex Carbon Arc Projectors just as they were in 1921, a bit rusty in there but you know there would be film technicians out there these days that could probably get these girls up and running and to see them here in one piece is truly just remarkable, it's so rare to find them these days and there were two of these Carbon Arc Projectors so what would happen is there would be a rod, a filament that would be fed into the back of the projector and that would literally have a combustion and that would produce the light source that shot through the film onto the screen, you can just see there some of the old power and audio regulators used in the film, we're looking down now at the film train you'd obviously feed all the 35 and 48 mil film through that and the Carbon Arc Chamber there with a little peephole so you can see how much of the filament was left before you had to manually push it in, some of the old power there, the old dead man switch to get some power into those Projectors and the Carbon Arc really was a manual process, the Projectors would have to dial in and open that back door there you can see the big hinge of the cast iron projector and push in the little filament a bit more and a bit more so if the picture got a bit duller you'd push a bit more filament in and then there'd be more combustion and it would get brighter so some more real canisters here, you know films of the day still inside and then we move into just a side room now and there's a bit of some old generators, some power, obviously the switchboard still has some ceramic fuses there so a bit more upgraded than the original 1921 fittings but then there's an old contraption here which I can only assume is used when splicing film to check overlays and check the slides and the framing to make sure it's all held together properly, not in use anymore just sitting there in storage, a couple of old fuses and amp meters up on the wall there, it really is just incredible to see all of this technology just sitting there in the theatre dormant, it's like someone has walked out and turned the lights off all this time ago and now a beautiful shot coming up of the view from the projection room coming back through the port hole in the back wall that we've seen in the other videos and into the projection room looking over the canisters, the projectors and it is wonderful to see so thank you so much for joining me, please keep track of what we're doing as we move around theatres around the world and around Australia at easystagecraft.com and I'll see you in the next one, bye for now.