NeenahTD
Member
We are in Pre-prod for "Picasso at the Lapine Agile" by Steve Martin. In the show, a painting of "sheep in fog" must magically transform into Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon". This change is done in full light, and the sheep painting is onstage the whole show until the transformation at the end of act II. We are trying to figure out a way to do this where we don't see the mechanism of change...thus "magically".
Other's ideas:
- The easiest way to do this, and the way most other productions we've researched have done this, is to have the picasso painting on the back of the sheep painting and it rotates in place. Although cheap and easy, This way does not have the "magical" quality we are looking for as you can clearly see the painting rotate.
- Another way we saw was to use a rear projector which projects the sheep picture the entire show and then dissolves to the picasso. The change-over has the desired magical effect, but we don't like how the projected sheep painting looks. It is obviously a projection and makes a black out impossible without dimming the painting as well. This wouldn't be terrible except that the sheep painting is visible the entire show (1.5 hr+), and we would like to put other artwork on the wall that isn't projected. In our opinion, the obvious projection and other artwork make this idea look like a cheesy slideshow.
Our ideas:
- Our first great idea was to use a "fogscreen" in front of the sheep painting. A fogscreen is a curtain of mist that you can project onto (if you've been to the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, you've seen one of these in the beginning of the ride with an image of Davey Jones). The cool thing about the fogscreen is that the sheep painting is real, but the picasso can still appear in its place and the picture quality has the magical look we're going for. The bad thing is that rental is beyond our budget and building one seems to be difficult and the end product very questionable.
*- Our best idea so far is to use a painted scrim. The sheep painting is painted onto a white scrim, placed in a picture frame, and only lit from the front at a high angle to make it opaque. The picasso painting is then placed US a few inches from the sheep scrim (as if it was in the same frame) and lights are mounted in between the two. When the transformation happens, the sheep lights are turned off and the lights that are behind the scrim turn on to light the picasso. This should make the sheep translucent enough to see the picasso...(I think).
Has anybody done anything like this? I'm especially interested in the scrim idea...can anyone tell me if this will work like I'm thinking? Any other ideas for a "magical" transformation? All thoughts are welcome.
Thanks.
Jason M. Stoll
Assistant Technical Director
Neenah High School
Neenah, WI
Other's ideas:
- The easiest way to do this, and the way most other productions we've researched have done this, is to have the picasso painting on the back of the sheep painting and it rotates in place. Although cheap and easy, This way does not have the "magical" quality we are looking for as you can clearly see the painting rotate.
- Another way we saw was to use a rear projector which projects the sheep picture the entire show and then dissolves to the picasso. The change-over has the desired magical effect, but we don't like how the projected sheep painting looks. It is obviously a projection and makes a black out impossible without dimming the painting as well. This wouldn't be terrible except that the sheep painting is visible the entire show (1.5 hr+), and we would like to put other artwork on the wall that isn't projected. In our opinion, the obvious projection and other artwork make this idea look like a cheesy slideshow.
Our ideas:
- Our first great idea was to use a "fogscreen" in front of the sheep painting. A fogscreen is a curtain of mist that you can project onto (if you've been to the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, you've seen one of these in the beginning of the ride with an image of Davey Jones). The cool thing about the fogscreen is that the sheep painting is real, but the picasso can still appear in its place and the picture quality has the magical look we're going for. The bad thing is that rental is beyond our budget and building one seems to be difficult and the end product very questionable.
*- Our best idea so far is to use a painted scrim. The sheep painting is painted onto a white scrim, placed in a picture frame, and only lit from the front at a high angle to make it opaque. The picasso painting is then placed US a few inches from the sheep scrim (as if it was in the same frame) and lights are mounted in between the two. When the transformation happens, the sheep lights are turned off and the lights that are behind the scrim turn on to light the picasso. This should make the sheep translucent enough to see the picasso...(I think).
Has anybody done anything like this? I'm especially interested in the scrim idea...can anyone tell me if this will work like I'm thinking? Any other ideas for a "magical" transformation? All thoughts are welcome.
Thanks.
Jason M. Stoll
Assistant Technical Director
Neenah High School
Neenah, WI