In Conversation with Daniel Joseph
IESNYC President Zachary Pearson initiates conversations with creators and innovators whose work intersects with light in meaningful ways. To keep our community dynamic and fresh, we seek out design professionals who are inspired and curious. Only then can we look towards a future where new ideas and crossdisciplinary communication lead to smoother processes, more shared discoveries, and elevated project experiences.
Daniel Joseph
Executive Illusions & Effects Development, Walt Disney Imagineering
IESNYC: Was there a eureka moment where you realized light was going to be central to what you do?
JOSEPH: I think it found its way into my day-to-day pretty immediately, because light can make or break an illusion. I kind of describe an illusion like a symphony. If the saxophone or the trumpet is off, then everything kind of falls apart. So much of what my team does is finding ways to bend light and make light do things that it typically doesn't, and we try to find ways to make it do that well.
As a very young person and a young designer, I loved building things with light: wiring circuits, experimenting with blacklights and lasers and figuring out optics. All of those things I figured out through trial and error. I definitely don't have a formal education in lighting design, but I've worked with a lot of lighting designers at Disney and been mentored by legacy Imagineers who built special effects going way back to Epcot [circa1980].
For me, light is something to try to, in a way, tame. When I'm working on a Pepper's Ghost illusion, I call it chasing shadows and chasing lightleak. You have to have one place for that light to go (when it's not fully needed everywhere). That's a constant area of challenge and opportunity: extinguishing stray light that's bouncing around and causing trouble.
IESNYC: Special effects sources are fascinating, but do you still work with legacy sources like tungsten? Are you playing with metamers, being specific about the spectrum to achieve your desired effects?
JOSEPH: Yes, the broad spectrum sources are interesting. A sodium lamp can desaturate everything into a sepia tone. You really can't do that with LED.
Otherwise, I try to keep things moving into the solid-state stuff. Our theme parks tend to be open 18 hours a day during the holiday season, and a guest at 8:00 am should see the same quality of show as a guest who goes on the attraction right before close. LED fits that bill because of its longevity, and it can do things that incandescent sources can't. So it's LED and lasers all the way, with the sodium case as pretty much the rare exception.
IESNYC: You're walking this incredibly unique line where you’re operating on an architectural scale and duty cycle, but needing theatrical performance standards and finesse. In a building, a burnout in the lobby can be replaced in a couple of days. For you, it can break the magic, and that's a crisis.
JOSEPH: Yes, well said. That kind of summarizes what we do in illusion development. So much of what we invent and create in-house are custom, brand-new things. Some use classic parlor tricks expanded with new technology, others completely new. But they have to be industrialized because of that duty cycle. There's a delicate balance in making something look magical and light and dainty and beautiful, and then turning on the work lights and seeing the giant machine made of metal that makes that thing tick.
We use light and darkness to guide guests to what they're supposed to be looking at. In the Haunted Mansion, the omni mover [the Doom Buggy patrons ride in] is our camera, and we can pan the guests to look at what we want. But we don't have that in all our attractions.
So how do we accentuate what guests are supposed to be looking at? We use contrast. The areas that are apparently well lit are where the guest is going to focus, and the other areas recede back into nothingness.
What I call a “light budget” became really important on Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. Every photon we put in there – from projections to starfield systems – has a purpose. But they’re also causing stray light to bounce around and illuminate things we don't want people to see, like the coaster track. Sometimes not putting light into an area is the best way of dealing with it rather than chasing that stray light around. Chasing spill light and shadows is a constant, full-time job. The absence of light is definitely not an absence of effort.
IESNYC: There’s so much coordination required: projections versus ambient lighting and using textures to avoid reflections or make surfaces recede; and then guests in the space. Are you in the room from the start?
JOSEPH: It usually happens super early-on. If it's an afterthought, you're going to end up chasing your tail for a long, long time. Projection and ultraviolet prints work together beautifully. They look 3D and appear to emanate light, and you can match them almost to the same luminance. But that only works with early planning.
[The dark ride] Phantom Manor in Paris is a great example. UV effects mixed with RGB white lighting creates a whole new feel and look that isn't really one or the other. Things that have that otherworldly glow look ghostly, but surfaces illuminated with white lighting look normal. By mixing the two together you get something that doesn't look like either, which I think is a blast.
The effects and illusions have to be compatible with where the lighting designers put their fixtures. There’s a lot of stray light and different kinds of light. And then, yes, the finishes of all the surfaces have to be conducive to that. Matte surfaces, surfaces with texture, dark velours… those help you bump up your contrast and bring things forward and backward as you want, rather than the light dictating that for you.
IESNYC: Obviously, you have an amazing workshop there. How much of this gets tested in mockup versus resolved in the field?
JOSEPH: We test and mock everything up well ahead of time, so there are not too many gotchas on-site. But what I love about working in a real blackout space with real materials and the correct fixtures is that sometimes things appear that you didn't know would happen: happenstance effects. Like, oh, I didn't realize that if I put this fixture here and illuminate this surface, I get this cool shadow. You wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to discover that in the field.
So much of what we do is experimentation. We’re playing with materials out in the world that are not necessarily meant for entertainment: misusing them for something that might be beneficial to our cause. It's very hard to describe an illusion in words. You'll be in a meeting and even drawing on a dry-erase board can be awkward. So much has to be a physical, practical thing that you actually look at.
If I find in some early meetings I get those puppy-dog stares: “I think I understand what you're saying, but I'm not fully getting it.” That's when I say, Give me a few days, we'll throw this together in the lab. As soon as it's a physical thing that people can be around and see in three dimensions, everyone pretty much gets on-board. Then they’re rolling out the red carpet and asking what we need for next steps.
IESNYC: Yes, I get that. Our clients can be great at visualizing, but renderings and computer simulations still can’t fully show those special moments and details that bring a project life. You don't have proof of concept until you show them a mock-up at scale or with the actual materials.
As new technologies and visualizations become more central to workflows, where do previz and simulations fit into your process?
JOSEPH: Because so much of what we do involves weird optical phenomena, we don't do too much previz to prove things out. Even complex optical simulation software built into SolidWorks and MATLAB Lab are just simulations.
One of the things for illusions is the need to see them in the round and with two eyes. On a screen it's inevitably going to look flat. Mirrors are still very hard for simulation systems to do correctly, and so much of the world of illusions is smoke and mirrors. Optical bounces, particulates, and ray tracing can be hard. Thus far I find a quick mock-up puts a concept in play better than any digital simulation.
IESNYC: We're using VR for some newer projects, but we’re finding that it becomes more critical to create the effect of the lighting design and intent rather than a literal simulation of the proposed design in these virtual spaces.
JOSEPH: Sometimes when our pre-visualization team is doing layouts and ride-throughs for project teams, we’ll take a cellphone video of one of our illusion mock-ups. They can place the illusion into their 3D model with the lighting layout, so we can ensure they’re not ruining the effect and that infrastructure like speakers and rigging are fading into the shadows. Lighting is the life and death of things.
So we’re visualizing digital to practical back to digital (which I find kind of funny). That combination, in the end, gives the whole team a pretty accurate assessment.
IESNYC: After opening, are there real world challenges that you can't anticipate. Like do you get spill from the guests’ light-up ears and other souvenirs?
JOSEPH: Yeah, there's always those things that you couldn't have anticipated. I haven't had any run-ins with glowing lightsabers or ears, as of yet. But cellphone flashlights, definitely.
Usually we can tease out potential problems through physical mock-ups and then testing in the field and during installation. But with each project, as I'm sure you know, you do gain lessons learned that help you with the next projects. Experience gives you an actual leg to stand on when you bring issues up.
Like I said, much of what we do at Imagineering is prototypical. It's brand-new light fixtures or technologies, or even a brand new idea of how to do something. My team has over 50 patents over the years here, which is cool.
Walt Disney invented this term, “plussing it up.” I’ll put an illusion to bed, but as Imagineers, we have to push technologies and up our game. Projectors, for instance, are constantly getting smaller and brighter, so we’re forever refreshing designs around them. Doing rehabs, “plussing it up,” provides a constant stream of work.
IESNYC: We get some jobs every year that are a very old project or a client that we've had for years needing a specific modified fixture or specialized output. And even if you have sort of the secret sauce that you designed for or your specific performance specifications, manufacturers get bought or go out of business, or a product line discontinues…. It can be a challenge to reverse-engineer something that fits previous needs with new sources.
What's the new technology you're most excited about right now?
JOSEPH: Laser-excited phosphors, which came out of car headlight technology. The light going in is high-power coherent laser light. The light coming out is extremely columnated but technically non-coherent. It has all the brightness and quality of a “white” laser, and it’s eye-safe. In my world, it’s a holy grail. It solves the stray light problem almost entirely: you're putting light precisely where you want it and nowhere else. I think architectural lighting is the next stop for this technology.
IESNYC: That's what brought us together. The parallels between the magic of light and lighting for magic turn out to be even closer than expected.
JOSEPH: Yes. Light and darkness are what we both do. There’s a lot of overlap, and I appreciate your interest in collaboration.
Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
