Drama Queen | CGI & Photography Case Study | Dale May | New York
DRAMA QUEEN
Services: Concept Development, Art Direction, Studio Photography, Photorealistic CGI Environment Creation, Compositing & Post-Production | 2025
“The most demanding dramatic roll of her life… was life itself.”
THE CONCEPT
The image had been living in my head for a while: an award-winning actress on Oscar night, wading through a river in full gown, rescuing her driver from a sinking car wreck, Oscar still in hand. Composed, determined, completely unfazed. The kind of woman who wins the award and saves the driver and never smudges her lipstick. That was the character. That was the world. All I needed was the right dress and the right woman to wear it.
THE CHALLENGE
Oscar-worthy wardrobe is not easy to come by on a personal project budget. The concept required something specific: a gown with the weight of Hollywood history behind it, glamorous enough to sell the fiction, cinematic enough to survive a river. Everything else, the river, the sinking car, the SWAT perimeter, the In and Out Burger, could be built in CGI. But it had to start with the dress.
The other challenge was scope. What started as a single hero image began expanding into a full series once the character took shape. Each new scene needed its own world, its own props, its own story. All of it would have to be designed and built from scratch, or pulled from my growing archive of 3D assets, with no location, no set, and no production budget to speak of.
THE APPROACH
Finding the Wardrobe
The concept unlocked the moment a designer friend posted a new piece to her feed: a sparkly gold jumpsuit with a 1970s silhouette, exactly the kind of piece that reads as both timeless and slightly dangerous. I contacted Joy Teiken of Joynoëlle immediately and she generously agreed to lend it for the shoot. The wardrobe was confirmed. Now I needed the right woman to inhabit it.
Casting the Right Subject
I reached out to Emerson Croasdale, who I had worked with once before on "Last Trip Home," an image that earned me Photographer of the Year in the Digitally Enhanced category at the International Photography Awards in 2024. Emmy, as she likes to be called, is the daughter of a woman I went to high school with and happens to be studying at Parsons School of Design, where I earned my BFA in photography. Small world, right cast.
Emmy was immediately on board and that gave me the green light to expand the concept into a full series. The Drama Queen universe started taking shape: an Oscar-winning actress navigating the drama of her own life with the same commitment she brings to every role. The river rescue was the opening act. From there came her much older husband, whispering the location of a buried gun as SWAT closes in. The phone call that changes everything. The ceremonial In and Out Burger and joint before the Oscars. A woman who treats every moment like a scene worth shooting.
Building the World
We had the wardrobe, the perfect subject, and a vintage telephone prop. Everything else would be CGI, another example of how the hybrid method compresses production without compromising the result. I also sourced a wig in advance so we could move between scenes without needing a hair stylist on set.
One of the questions I get most often is how long it takes to build a photorealistic CGI environment. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on what exists in your archive. Over years of production, I've built a library of 3D assets: furniture, vehicles, props, environmental elements, and characters, that can be imported, adapted, and repurposed across projects. Sometimes a scene comes together quickly because the right assets are already there. Sometimes the material or color needs to be changed to fit the story. And sometimes, something has to be built from the ground up. For Drama Queen, it was a combination of all three.
To achieve the most realistic final results I used photogrammetry, custom modelling and photographic textures, rendered the scene in Blender 3D in Cycles Render Engine and final compositing with blue screen photography.
On Set
I came in prepared with references for how I wanted Emmy to approach each scene, with a clear intention for every shot and enough flexibility to let her make it her own. That's the standard: go in with a plan, nail the intended image, then leave room for something unexpected before moving on. With actors and strong subjects, the unexpected is often the best frame of the day.
Post-Production
After selecting finals, each image was siloed from its background and brought into 3D software as an image plane, with the CGI environment built and lit around it. I began with the river scene, since landscapes with water require the most time to build and render convincingly, even when the component assets are already in archive. The goal for that opening image was something dreamlike and painterly, closer to a movie poster than a photograph. The supporting images in the series were treated as film stills, grittier and more immediate, each one a frame from a movie that doesn't exist but absolutely should.
THE RESULT
Drama Queen is a four-scene cinematic series built entirely in a studio, with one real garment, one vintage prop, and a subject who understood the assignment completely. Together they tell the story of a character whose life is so dramatic, you want to watch it unfold… from a distance.
CREDITS
Photography, CGI, Art Direction & Post-Production: Dale May
Agent: WSWcreative
Model: Emerson Croasdale
Gold Jumpsuit: Joynoëlle
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