Fabricating the Evidence

So, the fabrication of the Great This Boy Forest is underway.  And it's a big project, I'll be at it a while longer.

Kelvin visits the set in it's raw cedarwood state

The act, as I mentioned before has a couple of practical needs.  There's a stream (to which I've added a waterfall and to be honest, I've no idea how that's going to happen yet.) The whole stage needs to be big enough that the shots won't need compositing later - that's important - and, to offer variety and comic prat-fall potential; lots of levels.

We never talked about set building on the Firebird blog, it was all done before I thought to write anything down, so let me tell you a little about the techniques I've been using to plant this forest.

I used hardboard as a basic surface.  Experience has taught me it's a good soft material and the thickness is right and it's inexpensive too.  I have to admit, I started out thinking like a stage carpenter and created lots of flat topped rostra who's faces I was going to contour to look like natural landscape.  That was never going to look like anything more than pantomime scenery.  I've spent a bit of time hanging around forests and moors in recent months.  Very seldom do you find a flat floor that you can conveniently stand a puppet on. With a bit of  bending and pushing I forced the lower floor into a more contoured shape all over.  The added value is that it now needs less support from underneath than the version I had originally designed which leaves the under-croft free of supporting members that get in the way of tie-down bolts. The tension in a curved surface creates it's own strength.  Try it with a letterbox - one of those evil ones with stiff brushes and the internal flap and extra strong spring.  A thin, flat envelope will fold and crush turn to pulp but arc the envelope between your thumb and fingers and it forces it's own way through.  How do you think the postman does it?

I had to eat loads of Wheetabix for this

The same principle is what I've used on the drops between levels, only in a different way.  The latticework here is made of cereal boxes cut into strips.  You'd be surprised how strong it actually is.  The strips are woven together and a spot of hot glue tacks each contact point.  Because each thread is anchored to a solid object, there is very little space for them to move.  When they are covered in pasted newsprint they become a very thin but solid surface.  Adding a plaster based rendering - I'll mix it with wood shavings to make a gritty loam floor - and the whole thing will be almost completely hard.  It can be drilled and bolted and everything!

On the other side of the stage and further into the story, a rocky strata is required for the river bed.

The limitation of the cardboard lattice is that it works best for smooth contoured shapes and rolling hummocks. I have used it in the past for cliff faces but on this scale, a much better material is good old fashioned expanded polystyrene.  It's cheap - free in fact: never pay money for the stuff,  you'd be surprised what you'll find in other peoples bins!

Breaking this into little chunks makes a delightful mess that I'll be clearing up for months but it lets me work really fast creating, in an evening, all the basic formations of shelves and gullies that would take nature several centuries.  A hot glue gun is my best friend in this as in most things because polystyrene almost never allows wet glues to dry, it's too good an insulator!  Even hot glue stays soft for ages.

The Gillespie Stage is basically Victorian technology.  A wooden structure throughout means I'm happy to drill and screw into the main supporting members as I need to. Originally it was built to have a solid chipboard floor about half and inch thick but for this show, I've ditched that and moved some of the joists round to take the floor up and down as necessary.  Overhead, are three cantilevered lighting bars.  They are raised off the floor by two main upright rails that you can see in the back of all the pictures. Because my lights are very (ha ha) light, this is no issue but it is unsound to try and rig a camera off the grid at the moment because there's no support at the front of the stage.  In come the trees, so.  The same latticework structure as the soft contours, they are built around several supporting struts.  I don't know if I want to put the camera up there yet but now if I do, I can.

On "The Extraordinary Revolution of the Firebird," I used a tripod only once in the whole production because I discovered that it was safer to clamp every conceivable thing directly to the stage unit. That way, if it gets a dunt halfway through a shot, nothing moves...   well everything moves, but all together...  like a planet... so the camera never sees it which is the same thing.  Makes sense?

That's where I've got to.  More to follow.  Much MUCH more.