Production Musings

“Inside Outside Upside Down” Series

// October 27th, 2009 // 8 Comments » // Stage Design

The life that Jesus lived and the things he taught were totally backwards from the ideas the world held.  Today it’s no different.  Love the person one cubicle over who grates on your every last nerve?  (Don’t read too much into that Colin.)  This series explored the teachings of Jesus regarding things such as modern idolatry, human sexuality, what is love (baby don’t hurt me), family and a few others.

For those much farther along the lighting and design process that I am, I’d love your critique of our stage designs.  We always strive to do the best with what we have when it comes to stage design.  At the cost of $3.25 plus shipping per umbrella we created this.  There are obvious similarities to the previous design.  The idea behind it was to include a few subtle tie-ins to the series title.  Umbrellas belong outside but we used them inside and upside down.  Too cheesy?  :)  Hit them with some deep purple gel and really made them pop.  The rectangles in the back were supposed to be like falling dominoes, except upside down.  Only a few people connected that.  What would it look like to really do an upside-down stage design?  How could we have done it better?  I was personally pleased with how this one turned out.  It’s one of the most colorful/Dr. Seuss looking things we’ve done in a while.

Now, let the next stage design begin…

Irrational Series Stage Design

// September 16th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Stage Design

Ok, back to stage designs.  I’m not going to lie, this design wasn’t a big hit.  It definitely wasn’t a big hit for the poor couple that chose to get married on the stage with giant question marks in the background.  (But hey, I like to think that we helped strengthen their marriage – what better day to really question everything.  Right?) On a serious note, to that couple and all who get married at Blue Ridge, we do apologize that we are unable to change the stage to be more wedding friendly and elegant. There are just not enough hours in a Saturday!

The week of stage change, the whole team was in Chicago for Willow Creek’s Art Conference.  There wasn’t much we could do but we gave it our best shot.  Two of the stage design volunteers, Sawyer and Sue Scott, took it upon themselves to make several giant question marks matching the series graphic above.  Styrofoam insulation is the stuff.  It’s cheap.  It’s light.  It’s easy to work with.  After some tracing and many many hours of cutting 3 different sized question marks they were done.  Prior to leaving for Chicago, I changed a few colors and aimed the Color Splits where the question marks would appear.  When we returned to Lynchburg on Saturday, Todd and I spent several hours getting them hung, stood back, and said, “It is good.”  It was our best.  This was our last design with the giant riser built on stage.  I’d say it was split 50/50 of those where were sad/happy to see it go.

In the upcoming designs, we’ll be using Google Sketchup more.  I’m excited about the potential for designing virtually.

April ’09, The Vineyard Series Stage

// April 24th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Stage Design

The Team:
Crystal George, Art        Laura Eagle, Art
Randy Redmond, Pipe Bending       Sawyer Scott, Pipe Bending/Design
Sue Scott, Pipe Bending/Design        Scott Breiholz, Trellis Work
Todd Foster, Design/Stage Hand        Colin Harman, Design/Stage Hand
Andrew Hunt, Design/Stage Hand

It’s going on five months since we’ve been using the extra big stage riser and it looks like it has 7 weeks left through this next series.  We will miss you, you big, giant, trusty stage riser.  You treated us well.  Actually, the neat part is the cost of this whole thing.  The initial build took about 5 days and cost $1160.  We’ll be getting about 6 months of use out of it….at an estimated $192 per series (assuming a 4 week series).  It was also constructed so that about 95% of it will be recycled into our housing repair ministry.

The challenge within each series this year has been how to incorporate the riser in a new fresh way that ties into the series.  As Colin, Todd and I brainstormed ideas going into The Vineyard series, we all settled into using a mixture of flourish/vine art and soft goods.  Laura and Crystal hand drew each vine onto the spandex and then colored them in.  Sawyer and Sue made the side structures come to life.  Each structure is supported by three main vertical 1.5″ pipes and 5 hand bent (Thanks to the help of their good friend, Randy Redmond) 3/4″ pipes.  Diameter = 5′ and their radius expands just slightly past 180º so they look more circular rather than half round from the front.  Pipe couplers were used to expand the total height to 15′ and were bolted at each vertical pipe.  We stretched spandex around each structure, covered the tops with black plastic (the technical would be “Giant Garbage Bags”) and lit each from the bottom used AC Lighting’s LED Color Splits.  (I’m a big fan of these LED fixtures, BTW.  They’ve been rock solid.)

Scott’s trellis design worked very well in front the vine art.  We back lit this w/ 4 Par 64s using Rosco Light Tough Spun diffuser and Storaro Yellow.  Here’s a few shots.  For more, check out my Flickr.

2009 Stage Design #2 – Part 1

// February 20th, 2009 // 11 Comments » // Stage Design

We’re going into a series called “Shift” addressing how we think about other people.  Kicking off the 7 week series was a baptism service and we wanted to try a something we’ve never tried before.  We made a riser, a big one.  After planning it out, a team of about 10 very skilled volunteers came in and built the structure in 2.5 days.  We photographed the process over 5 days from start to finish, and you can see that in an earlier post.  The structure is made of wood, has a curved front similar to the curvature of our main stage floor.  It’s dimensions are 5′Hx16′Dx30′W.  We wanted the front of the stage to have 5-7 openings approximately 3′x4′ to contain the series title “SHIFT.”  Todd is installing the letters this week and I’ll write about that in Part 2.  The openings were covered with spandex from behind and stapled.  2 of the AC Lighting Color Splits were used to get the wash across the spandex.  Lighting the top portion was a challenge because it decreased the lighting angles but all in all I think it’s worked very well.  For the Baptism service the look was set apart from the look for the series and was primarily blues and greens.  For the series, we selected Roscolux #2003 Storaro Yellow for front light for the band – so far it’s been best at lower intensities and provides a very warm look.  Roscolux #26 Light Red will be used starting this week.