Decorative Metal

Looking through the latest issue of The Fabricator I saw an add for TwistedBars.com. As the name implies, they do sell twisted rod, but they also sell a variety of other products as well; such as embossed, hammered, birdcages (baskets, spheres and oblongs), finals (ends, cut silhouettes, and wood grained metal. They can do steel, aluminium, copper, and brass. The wood grained piece caught my eye because there have certainly been times in the past where the designer wanted the look of wood, but the scenery needed the structural support of steel. While paint can do wonders, wood faking steel and vise versa never quite work. But, it the steel had a wood grained texture - perhaps this would be a suitable alternative in those situations.

Transformers Filming

Transformers has been filming here in Chicago the past several weeks, and it has brought out lots of crowds. Last week we went down to check out the installation of some of our rental deck (not installed by us). Nothing like working on top of a 25 story building. Of course, you could ignore the view and count the number of OSHA violations....


On the other hand, it was cool seeing some of the scenery they brought in. They had scenery sitting in lots across the city, on trailers, staged for future use. With the cranes, a casual glance most of it looked like no more than building ruble... the lack of hardhats, coupled with sharpie inventory marks made it a little more obvious.


Looking at the scenery brought up an interesting topic: How much of this was built for the show, and how much was pulled from stock? The ruble, the cars, and even the damaged bus shelters were generic - they could be used repeatedly, just like many theatre props. On the other hand, these pieces are large - and would cost alot to store, and with travel and set up could require additional touch up. At what point then does the cost of storage out weight the cost of building new? Thoughts?

AV Technology Course

Info Comm is offering an online course in AV Technology. There is one thing that is certain - and its that AV technology isn't fading any time soon. Its an affordable and green way to give a variety of looks, content, and feel to a very basic set for a variety of uses. Especially for coporate work - meetings, trade shows and such, AV is an option that is increasingly popular, and it is often incorporated into more and more traditional theatre.

Better yet, the quick start class online is free! You can take a look at that course here.

The course is online and an introduction leading to further certification. The test costs $200 to non-members.

If you want to take the pre-test to test your knowledge go here

This is a PDF that discusses the requirements for full certification.

Info Comm also has an article about project management and budgeting for live events.

Regardless if you choose to take the class or not, sheck out the site - there is a variety of worthwhile info to check out!

"Green" Paint

Bommerang Paint offers paint that is recovered from old, unused paint. While it does come in a limited color pallette, it only uses about 1% new paint, and has excellant paint qualities. While the palette certainly limits its theatrical use, it is a good product to keep in mind when going green is a priority.

Square Clamps

Finding ways to clamp onto pipe provides lots of options: kee klamps, speed rail, lighting c-clamps or mega clamps, or even leg sockets for platforms.

Berge Equipment offers several styles of clamps for square tube (1.5"), including a flange. Most of the clamps connect a pipe or tube to a square tube for railings.

The light Source has clamps for 2" box that are similar to cheese boroughs.

Palay Display carries a clamp that allows you to insert a 5/8" threaded rod on the top for construction specialty racks.

Wagner offers square tube flanges and flange covers.

For casters, Service Caster has square sockets for stem casters.

And for capping the tubes look to alliance plastics.

NRG Researchoffers a clamp that is reminiscent of a beam clamp. Once again you are limited to a 5/8 stud or receptacle for hanging from the clamp.

Also check out J W Winco for more options and their blog. The blog, by the way is actually very informative and fun - definitely worth a read.

Shape Products has a variety of square tube components (curved pieces, corners, flanges)

And for splicing two tubes together take a look at wagner.

For legs, the Leg-a-Matic II can be used with either 2" square or 1 1/2" sched. 40 pipe.

I suspect that the options are greater for round tube / pipe because it is more difficult to weld since you have to shape the round tube to match correctly (though this this is easier with the correct tools, or you can purchase shaped connectors to weld on).

Google Wave

I recently heard about Google Wave, and its a site worth referring. It reminds me of the software I used to use for shows from basecamp - that allowed all of the project members on the team to upload documents, make revisions, look at the schedule and to-do lists and generally see the status of the project. This is a little more involved, in that it also allows conversation - more like instant messaging, and thus a little more fluid.

Note that to best use the sight, you need to use google chrome for your internet browser.

What I am using currently is Newforma Project Center. It is great for organizing lots of jobs and indexing and searching information about the jobs. It also works nicely for both incoming and outgoing file transfers and rfi's. It does have some scheduling capacity, but nothing that quite compares to either of the aforementioned to-do lists. Also, conversation is the same as email, but it works nicely for managing a large number of projects at one time.

Prototype This

Over the holiday weekend, in the midst of doing a variety of home projects I watched the 1st (only) season of Prototype This.

The show has a core team of 4 (an electrical engineer, special effects guru, Robotics guy, and a material specialist) that join together to put together some amazing prototypes during a 10 day to 2 week period. Some of the projects they tackled were a mind controlled car that went into neutral when the driver got angry,
a backyard water slide simulator, and a flying life guard, supplying life saving floatation devices to unmanned beaches.

I liked the series, and would recommend it for several reasons.
-They use alot of materials that are used in theatre
-They show alot of different machining technologies, cnc machines, vaccuforming, laser cutting, water jetting
-They use a variety of animation / feedback and other items useful to automation.
-It shows that you can do some amazing things in 2 weeks with the right resources (granted they weren't two 40 hour weeks).
-While cash certainly wasn't an issue (budgets other than time were not even mentioned), using resources wisely was important to meet their goals. They often went to the top of the field for what they were trying to accomplish to get ideas and gain knowledge.
-I think the prototyping process is important, and too often overlooked. And, on top of being important for the realization of a finished product, challenging yourself to do a proof of concept can help you learn a variety of skills even if a finished product is not the end goal.

So if you have a few hours, take a look!

History of Video Walls

Blooloop has an article on the history of the video wall. It's worth a read. I first remember seeing this technology with the Who's Tommy.

Also on the site is an article about
USITT.

As with the above resource, it is not specifically theatre related. While I always "knew" that there were many different types of entertainment that used either technical directors specifically, or an equivalently named position, I really didn't fully grasp how many different places utilize the same skill sets that TD's nurture. Just as every show is a little different, not every museum job or attraction, or event, or trade show is the same, but all of these jobs require similar skill sets. For instance, all require planning and organizational skills, knowledge of a wide variety of construction techniques, materials, estimating, communication skills among the many other skills TD's must utilize.

Addams Family

With the opening of Addams Family on Broadway, my articlediscussing how we built the ground row including doing the lighting for all of the city lights. PRG also has an article in the issue that you should check out.

Exhibit Builder also ran an article about the show.

I enjoyed building the piece for a variety of reasons. Mostly, the project offered a challenge due to aligning the graphic to the substrate, while making the lights assessable. But first the graphic needed to be finalized. The beginning of the project started with samples of the printed graphic with multiple colors of grain of wheat lamps hooked up so that we could test how brightly the lamps would show. This led to a subsequent sample where a graphic was printed that had about 10 different percentages of transparency (ink), for the windows, each with lighting behind so that the final image could be modified to the desired window transparency. Once the graphic was off the printers, we had the experience of the samples to lead the way through the rest of the construction process.

It was a fun piece to build!

Foam Coat

Rosco has a story about how they created a short article about how an entryway was carved from foam, covered with foam coat and painted. I think it is interesting that while the foam coat was wet, they sprinkled sand on top - I have mixed sand into paint before for texture / traction, but this works as well to help with the up-close realism that museums must offer guests.