WHAT
WE
OPERATE
Five disciplines, one department. A show does not get sub-divided into separate vendors who meet on site for the first time at bump-in.
DRAG / SCROLL →Refract Studio — a live creative production studio in Melbourne, working across lighting design, stage design, live production, visual screen content and audio design.
LIGHTING·STAGE·LIVE·SCREEN·AUDIO
STUDIO INTRODUCTION
Most shows are assembled from five separate hires who meet for the first time at bump-in. We make those five decisions together, so the light, the structure, the screen and the sound arrive already agreeing with each other.
SERVICES
WHAT
LIGHTING
DESIGN
Plot, patch and documentation. The rig is designed around the moment it has to make — and whoever designed it is at the desk on the night, which changes what gets drawn.
- OUTPUT
- PLOT / PATCH / DOCUMENTATION
- DECIDED WITH
- STAGE · SCREEN
- OPERATED BY
- WHOEVER DESIGNED IT
- FOR
- THEATRE · LIVE · EVENTS
STAGE
DESIGN
Structure drawn to be lit. Surfaces chosen for how they take a beam, geometry chosen for how it reads from the back row — decided alongside the lighting rather than handed over to it.
- OUTPUT
- PLAN / SECTION / BUILD NOTES
- DECIDED WITH
- LIGHTING · AUDIO
- BUILT TO
- WHAT THE VENUE ALLOWS
- FOR
- INDEPENDENT VENUES
LIVE
PRODUCTION
Bump-in to bump-out. The schedule, the crew, the running order, and someone competent on comms at the point in the night where a plan stops being a document and starts being decisions.
- OUTPUT
- RUN SHEET / CREW / SCHEDULE
- COVERS
- BUMP-IN TO BUMP-OUT
- ON SITE
- EVERY NIGHT OF IT
- FOR
- INDEPENDENT ORGANISERS
VISUAL
SCREEN
CONTENT
Content authored for the screen the room actually has, rather than letterboxed into it — and timed with the lighting instead of running beside it on its own clock.
- OUTPUT
- CONTENT / MAP / TIMELINE
- DECIDED WITH
- LIGHTING
- TIMED
- WITH THE SHOW
- FOR
- THE SCREEN YOU HAVE
AUDIO
DESIGN
Score, sound design and system treated as one problem. The room gets listened to before anything is written, so what you built lands where the audience is actually standing.
- OUTPUT
- SCORE / SOUND DESIGN / SHOW FILE
- DECIDED WITH
- LIGHTING · STAGE
- MEASURED
- IN THE ROOM
- FOR
- THE SEATS, NOT THE DESK
- SELECTED WORK IS BUILT FROM THE SHOWS FOLDER AND REQUIRES JAVASCRIPT
STUDIO PHILOSOPHY
THE SAME
PEOPLE
DESIGN IT
AND RUN
IT
Melbourne’s production studios are genuinely good, and they are built for festival budgets. That leaves a whole tier of the industry — emerging artists, small venue operators, independent organisers — choosing between going without and assembling something that works technically but has no identity at all.
Refract is built for that tier from the ground up. Not a scaled-down festival house: the same design thinking and the same technical competence, at a scale and a price that matches where you actually are.
The studio came out of the wings of the National Theatre in St Kilda — captaining technical production teams through Jesus Christ Superstar, Dance Project, Chicago, The Addams Family and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
- PRECISE
Being late is being wrong. Numbers before adjectives, and a plan that survives contact with the venue.
- ASSURED
We have run the room under pressure. You will not spend the night managing us.
- DIRECT
Plain answers about cost, about scope, and about what a room will simply not let you do.
- WARM
Being priced out of good design is not the same as not wanting it. Nobody gets talked down to here.
CONTACT