NYC Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Trailer

To announce A Midsummer Night’s Dream for New York City Ballet, we were asked to create a visual world that felt both surreal and cinematic — one that could honour the ballet’s heritage while speaking in a more contemporary, emotionally charged tone.

The challenge was twofold: how to translate Shakespeare’s vivid, magical storytelling into a ballet context — and how to do it without leaning on fantasy tropes or losing the edge that defines NYCB’s identity. From day one, this was about building something technically ambitious, narratively rich, and tonally precise.

We began by constructing a liminal set – a minimalist studio space subtly invaded by nature. Somewhere between stage and dream. Central to both the ballet and our film was the oak tree, which became the spine of our narrative. We manually rigged a model to grow from sapling to full canopy, giving us a natural rhythm to work around. Every asset that followed – from Titania and Oberon’s crowns to beetles inspired by the children’s costumes – was hand-built to feel rooted in story, never decorative. Bottom’s head was sculpted directly into bark using ZBrush, a nod to transformation that felt tactile and grounded.

One of the trickiest briefs came later: representing Puck. The NYCB team wanted a clear nod to his role in the performance, including his iconic pose – but in a way that felt integrated, not imposed. We’d already planned to use fireflies (a recurring motif in the ballet) to inform our lighting design, but we pushed further. Could the fireflies become Puck?

We ran R&D tests, exploring how performance footage could be tracked and interpreted through particles. In 3DS Max, we manually tracked key points on the dancer’s body – heads, hands, limbs – and used Tyflow to animate firefly particles along those paths. Each was given nuanced motion and a subtle glow, echoing choreography through light.

We added motion blur, atmospheric FX and colour grading to embed the fireflies within the world. The result was a moment that felt earned, not imposed: a magical, shape-shifting finale drawn directly from performance.

Every layer – from floating spores to shifting moonlight – was custom-built. A fully digital world grounded in craft, storytelling, and careful technical design. It’s this interplay between narrative and execution that defines the final piece.

A project that stretched us technically, sharpened us creatively, and gave us the chance to bring a classic story into an entirely new light.

A dream, engineered. A world between worlds.