Opening set

[thelightingmancan]

As I said, we are doing a show for Very Special Arts, and we have a house front for the set on the stage. It does not move, and another idea our director had was to have the middle of the set open into fourths, with the middle two sections folding onto the outer two. Any comments on how to do this, or other ideas.

 

[gafftaper]

Do you want this movement automated or can we have some technicians push the house apart? What kind of budget do you have? What level of skill do your carpenters have? Do you have access to someone who can weld?

 

[thelightingmancan]

We would love it to be automatic, but the set could be opened. They have enough money to buy a scrim, and it is funded off of grants, so we could probably get more money if we needed. We have pretty skilled carpenters, and a welder.

 

[Van]

Sounds to me like you just want to turn your set into a giant "Bi-Fold" closet door. It would certainly be easy to do. It could be rigged to open via a Traveller curtain type track or by people pushing it open or by cable automation in the floor. Really does depend on the budget, time and skill.

 

[thelightingmancan]

This set looks like the front of a Southern Farmhouse, with a large, covered porch. The section above the porch needs to open, but the roof section needs to stay still like the porch. I was thinking that we could slide the roof forward, like an overhang, and put barntrack behind that for the two sections in the middle that move. This way they move behind the two outer middle sections. We could also have the sections on hinges that swing the sections out, and cover the outer middle sections. There is also the roof to the porch that we could put tracking and such on top of.

 

[thelightingmancan]

We will either have the midsection split into quads, then have the two inner sections slide on top of the two outer sections. We could then run a barn tracking system above the sections, behind the roof overhang, and run a cable system on the roof of the porch. the cables can then turn and go behind the set, where someone can pull them like a curtain, or we can use a motorized system.

Our other thought was to have the midsection in quads, and have the two inner sections swing open on top of the outer sections. This would probably be a lot more dramatic, and a lot harder to do. We were tinking some large hinges, and a pneumatic system to open it.

These are our two systems under consideration, and we will hopefully have one picked soon, to prepare and get the set built.