Tagged with stage design

Winter Stage Set

Ok I need to post the winter stage set up!

I’m not going to write a ton on it here because I’ve written the process of the stage through the descriptions on Flickr. The challenge in this space is that there is not much stage depth and because the screens are over the stage I am very limited on where I can play height into any type of look. The original concept was to create some very large spheres in the vertical space, but that could have messed with more sight lines than the tree does (we did have to add some side TVs to cover our wing positions which had bad sight lines to begin with, this was talked about before the stage was even in design so it just sped up the install). I took the original concept and kept the winter theme but made it work for our space so it wasn’t quite so bulky and hid some of our unsightly stage floor mess. I wanted it to feel like winter, not Christmas so that it could squeeze past the holiday season and get some longevity out of the build.

As always you’re welcome to ask lots of questions! CLICK HERE for the flicker photos.

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Two-Fifty Tuesday: Gone Baby Gone

BLOG DOWN!

Ok well life has gotten crazy so I’ll give you the lowdown as to what has been going on.

I had summer hit hard with VBS, camps etc.

Continue reading

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String Theory

We have a Youth Leadership Conference / Missions experience going on right now here in Houston, Texas and my instructions were to create a cool stage.

Man…I wish constraints were always so fast and loose!

Continue reading

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Two Fifty Tuesday

I’ve gotten one major project out of the way, and that is the Creek Kids ministry expo. Our theme this summer is a beach theme. So in previous posts you saw the Tshirt with the surfboards, and the ministry fair…well we decided to go beach party in an awesome kind of way. I built 8ft table tops out of fencing panels to look like a beach board walk and set up an island in the center complete with sand and sand sculpture of the creek kids logo. There is a video,  I’ll throw the final up on my vimeo page. Continue reading

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Stage Setting

I am so bored at this event that I have to do something.
So you get a blog post, a bit premature on my new stage design.

This stage design was inspired by the talented Mr. Widney

I’ve used screen door mesh before and loved the look and feel of it, so when I saw Jason’s use of it I knew it was time to break it back out (yes i saved it).

I’ll talk a little bit about the process, but There is a description of the process on flickr! Continue reading

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Boxed In

The new series we started this week at LYF is called My Messed Up Family and to be honest a lot of what I’m leaning towards design wise for the stage has been more general purpose than series stylized. I enjoy those heavily stylized pieces but it’s kind of odd when your stage is branded for something and you’ve got another event going on in your auditorium!

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of using the stage as your canvas for abstract art. I’ve seen stage designers like Jason Widney do art pieces with some abstract meaning that just look plain awesome. So it was my desire to bring some art and beauty to the stage with this feature while keeping a little bit of abstract meaning. I tossed around a few ideas pre-Christmas to build some light columns out of some coroplast and 1x2s and was met with a little bit of resistance because it didn’t fit the theme as well. So back to the drawing board of my mind and I began to build upon the idea of using basic geometric shapes to build a complex thought on stage. We were talking about the foundations of family, the basic building blocks if you will. So the idea took off to build intertwined cubes.

Still using similar material to what I was going to build the columns out of I started figuring out scale etc. The 1×2′s come in 8ft lengths so I figured that cutting them in half and creating 4 foot cubes would be plenty epic enough to fill the stage. Now how many to actually build? they’re big! I settled on thirty which seemed like a daunting number but realistically once they were all hung interconnected was just about how many i needed. Now how to construct them. As you look through the photo set on flickr you’ll notice the first sides of the squares are interlocked. I used a half inch straight router bit and routed each piece of those with a notch so that the pieces set inside each other. This helped add strength since they are so large. I placed some wood glue and then used a nail gun with finishing nails to hold them together. After the glue set they were solid. The side pieces were the iffy ones. the router bit I bought did not fit my router so instead of routing out an inch and a half notch and applying the support on the sides I had to do a half inch notch in the top which was not quite as stable as I’d hoped but with wood glue and nails I achieved enough stability that they could be hung. I left one rung out of each cube so that I could interlock them all together then used the nail gun to finish them off.

Tie line worked great to hang the majority of them. I used safety cable to hang the first few to give a stronger base.
The hardest part after getting the first row hung was figuring out whether to go symmetrical or not. I chose not symmetrical and after that it all started falling together rather quickly.

This project took about two days from start to finish and material cost was around $200 as long as you have the router, chop saw etc.

more pics

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Two-Fifty Tuesday

I had a two day weekend last week and I liked it…

-I mean usually I take Saturdays and Mondays as my days off, and don’t get me wrong Mondays are awesome as days off because there is no one out running errands when I am. The biggest problem is that I don’t get two consecutive days to do anything like take some kind of side trip. So that being said, and with @jbenjamin85 leaving I think I’m going to renegotiate my day off.

- I had a great week of long long work days and I went to two shows, Brooke Fraser which melted my face off, seriously killer vocals, and then some other small band on friday that I didn’t even stay for the main show it. Yeah it was that bad.

- Sunday I got my stage and room fully reset for service after a wedding on saturday 2 minutes before it started. Talk about a heart attack and a half waiting to happen!!!

- I’m still trying to find some white space. If you don’t know what I’m talking about see my previous blog.

- I posted a new section next to the About column up top about consulting for stage/scenic design, projection, lighting, sound, creative ideas etc. Hit me up if you’re interested in starting a conversation I love to talk about stuff!

-I’m being a marketer today and it’s odd. I also helped collaborate on a non-standing tower made from masking tape and uncooked noodles to hold a marshmallow.

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A blog re-thought

I’m rethinking how to do this whole blog thing and I think for yours and my sake it’s going to be more short format. What are your thoughts on a blog from me? What kind of information do you want? I need feedback and I dont have anything to give away but my love ;-)

So from here on out stage design posts are going to be picture in nature. I’m going to try and describe the process in the pictures for you, but as always ask questions!

Current stage

Camp Stage set 1

Camp stage set 2

camp stage set 3

Student Conference Stage

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The camp post: part two

Last blog I talked about building a wall with 2×4′s, foam board and drywall mud.When your drywall has cured you are ready to attach it to the frames. Lay it out first, square it up how you want it if your frames aren’t 100% square because lets face it no one is perfect. Then pick how you want to attach it. I just used decking screws to affix it straight no chaser, er washer. You could use a washer but it may pucker more. If you aren’t afraid of needing to disassemble your wall go ahead and plaster over the screw heads.

You’ll see in my sketches how I did the foot support for the walls. The two larger outer walls had feet inset and the center section had no feet but is screwed into the other walls for its support.

Now how do you get that rained on concrete look?

Lots and lots of messy messy paint.

Before I go any further please put down a giant painters tarp (preferably plastic) underneath your entire wall and I don’t mean tuck it in between it’s toes. Do whatever you have to to physically set your wall on the tarp otherwise due to the joints in the wall pieces it spills out and runs down the wood and onto the floor.

I used a 5 gallon bucket a quart of medium grey acrylic base paint and about 3-4 gallons of water. Mix well. Drop some black acrylic paint in for tinting and splattering. I used a roller to mix and do most of the painting.

Most of this is just time and layers. Do a base coat to tinge the wall light grey with the roller and then immediately go create large drips by pressing the roller against the top of the wall and let it streak all over. The messier the better, there is no wrong or right to how you do this. (you will be speckled grey too).

Do two to three coats like this, it will provide the base for your texture and you will begin to see it darken with each coat after it dries.

From here on out you have to feel out how your wall needs to look. I took a spray bottle with black acrylic and water and created darker drip lines down the wall. A rust color was used in the major joints with the black. @jasonwidney drilled holes every so often and did the same with the black and rust colors inside the holes and let it drip back out to create a kind of re-bar rust pattern. After the texture was complete we had students as part of the camp series paint the logo into the wall with a more bold red color.

Have fun, experiment and remember with projection and lighting your options are endless!

Coming up….
The stage design process from projection to lighting to sound.
Pre-sets aren’t just for automation any more, try one on your portable system!
A unique stage element with a unique story: The Bumper Cross.

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