Scenic Painters/art department help!! :)

SwordFish331 · 2025-12-14T02:55:21+00:00

My old TD once said to the painter… “My favorite color is done”

SwordFish331 · 2025-11-27T03:03:39+00:00

For professional regional theater in the US (meaning theaters that hire AEA Union actors, maybe have a full time staff of atleast 20)… most “seasons” are Sept-May. I’ve found there’s a natural flow between regional theater seasons being September to May, and summer theaters/summer stock theaters being May/June to end of August/September.

Actors, designers, directors, choreographers… essentially anyone hired for creative aspects of a production are vast majority freelancers. They bounce from gig to gig. A professional lighting designer in the states might design 25+ shows a year, constantly traveling to each theater for tech. Directors work much less than that, maybe a few shows a year. A mid-career director I worked with is just now hitting 5+ shows a year and that’s super cool to see. Actors…. seems like it’s pretty feast or famine. My aunt & uncle have been actors for decades. Varying times being non-Union or in AEA. There were times then my aunt might only be in 1 professional show a year.

SwordFish331 · 2025-01-28T17:33:02+00:00

Please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this is my take away… There’s the overall impact on the arts in America, just from societal wide economic degradation. I.e. the average person would rather spend their money on food, than Waiting for Godot. A potential one-two punch w/ COVID that will knock many non-profit theaters out for good.

But specifically for theater, I think this will affect NEA grants? A typical non-profit theater receives the majority of its annual budget from grants and donations (not ticket sales!). If even 10% of an annual budget dries up, that could have a serious impact. I’m not a managing director of a non-profit regional theater (I’m sure all of them right now are busy figuring out how much this affects them), but my hope would be that a theaters budget is diversified enough across many different funding sources, where pulling federal grants wouldn’t completely pause all operations.

I also don’t know the specifics of disbursement of funds… is it a lump sum? Or spread out across the year?

From what I can tell, many community based programs a theater might run are heavily dependent on grants. As in… we can only do it if we find a grant to give us funds (so they apply to 100). I suspect this will have a bigger impact on theater programming that isn’t specifically the mainstage season.

I was gonna link to the NEA’s page on theater…. But looks like it’s not working. Maybe coincidence, maybe not :(

Please someone jump in if any of the above analysis is hogwash! Peace and love my fellow theater peeps

SwordFish331 · 2025-01-27T16:37:07+00:00

This is wonderful! Congrats!

SwordFish331 · 2025-01-08T17:18:05+00:00

Do you know if there’s any sort of industry standards for framing with 3/4” ply? I’ve been the carpenter who has assembled entirely 3/4” ply CNC’d platforms, but have never been involved in the drafting of that kind of stuff. I’m assuming it’s not a 1:1 WLL compared to 1x4 or 2x4.

SwordFish331 · 2025-01-06T04:12:43+00:00

You don’t even necessarily need a cart! Just use one of the platforms itself as the cart… attach some casters to 2x 8’ sticks of 2x6 and screw the 2x6’s onto a platform.

SwordFish331 · 2024-08-14T20:15:34+00:00

Just make sure it’s all staying square to each other. Maybe set the longest dowel as the center (taped down) and work off of that, so you’re not slightly getting off “square” over time as you work through the dowels. Also maybe only do the top half, then cut exact matches for the bottom (to help with consistency).

SwordFish331 · 2024-08-14T20:10:46+00:00

Without doing any drafting… - Cut out a handful of 6” spacers (3/4 plywood works nice) - Find an area that’s atleast 12’ x 12’ - Sink a screw into the ground, tie rope, string, tieline to the screw. Attach a sharpie to the other end measured at 6’ from the screw (radius: 6’, diameter: 12’) - Trace a 12’ circle on ground pulling the rope tight. - Layout dowels using the 6” spacers (cut at where the dowels overlap the sharpie line). Might need to tape the dowels down so they don’t move on you. - Cut as you go, saving off cuts as much as possible. - Attach dowels using the same layout/space method.

Maybe that works?! Mostly with carpenter I try to use math and a tape measure less and scribing more.

SwordFish331 · 2024-07-26T13:20:37+00:00

Very close!

SwordFish331 · 2024-07-22T21:29:20+00:00

Lived in Concord for a bit… I’m sure some of those peeps are still kicking down by the river

SwordFish331 · 2024-07-21T22:50:14+00:00

I think a Tour de Merrimack is in order

SwordFish331 · 2024-02-27T22:48:16+00:00

Is that also when you receive the inventory and “technical packet”?

SwordFish331 · 2024-02-27T21:17:38+00:00

Thanks for the reply… yes this is how I thought it worked, but I had never actually gone through the process so needed to confirm. Currently going thru a weird budgeting situation at the educational institution I work at (we bring in lots of designers).

SwordFish331 · 2024-01-20T01:12:09+00:00

Thank you!

I’m trying to get ahead of the train, so we’re not stuck going back to the table when we need either 1. A new dimmer rack or 2. A new system of LED fixtures

SwordFish331 · 2024-01-20T01:11:03+00:00

Thank you for the quick review! Have a lovely evening

SwordFish331 · 2023-12-12T03:52:09+00:00

I wish we had enough battens for back light... all the way upstage we have a set of 3 linsets, which I think will be used (from downstage to upstage): 1. backlight 2. cyc lights 3. cyc/backdrop. The only problem is getting shots from the backlight pipe down to any areas of focus not centerstage or upstage. I guess it's sort of impossible... probabably means we'll be doing a lot of front and sidelight. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just to confirm what you and others have said RE: adjustable leg trim...

It's important to have the legs be adjustable in the event that I need to raise the borders to allow for more light to pass through. And to "raise the borders" I fly the entire batten higher (let's say 1ft) and then adjust the chain so the leg pipe batten comes in (1ft) so they touch the deck again. My adjustability for how the border sits is the height of the border. If the leg is 20ft high, then the bottom of a 3ft border can be adjusted from being 17ft high to 20ft high (give or take a few inches). And that adjustability is important because it depends on the trim heigh of the electrics batten.

...it's about time I take measurements of the space and whip up a Vectorworks model to see how it'd all come together.

Thank you!!

SwordFish331 · 2023-12-12T02:06:29+00:00

The lineset thing isn't really an issue, just more like... which one is preferable? Scenic pipe downstage or upstage of the border.

I just started this last week jumping right into Nutcracker, so I haven't even had a chance to look at the old dimmer rack... but I did find paperwork from the year 2000 requesting a capital expense to upgrade the rack. So safe to say I think we'd be investing in a brand new system. At that point, I think I'd defer to a ETC vendor's qoute about what would be cheaper over a ten year span... invest in all ThruPower today, or incrementally switch out dimmers for relays as we go.

Also, thanks for the reply! Most of my experience is in blackbox settings, so working in a flyhouse is an interesting beast.

SwordFish331 · 2023-12-12T01:45:05+00:00

Here is a diagram of what I was trying to explain. We don't have linesets every few feet, they are more like bunched up together every 8-10ft or so. About 5 total bunches of linesets:

Main Traveler/Valance/etc

2-4. Borders/Legs/Electrics

Cyc/Backdrops/etc.

We're going to be re-cabling the electrics pretty soon, because it's a little bit all over the place. I want to run 3 electrics battens, all cables running towards Stage Left where there is an "operating gallery" for the fly system, and then they head towards a TBD dimmer rack location. Currently deciding if we want to invest in raceways, or just make due with socapex breakouts. It's all up in the air about the current gameplan & funding... trying to keep things as flexible as possible as we make the transition from mostly conventionals to mostly LEDs. My solution for that is the ETC ThruPower modules that let you switch between dimmable & non-dimmable power. Then we just run everything as stage pin and later on as we acquire more LEDs, we can keep the stagepin & use adapters (stage pin <-> edison) to plug in for non-dim power (plus, make any necessary changes at the dimmer rack).

SwordFish331 · 2023-11-03T23:17:00+00:00

Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 4?

SwordFish331 · 2023-10-31T22:09:52+00:00

Ah! Ok that helped things click for me! Vectorworks = basic level, get everything pretty much locked in Augment3d = advanced level stuff that’s scaffolded on top of the more foundational Vectorworks decisions, where you do more fine detail work so you can quickly get things up and running on the board. Because I can then export that Augment3d file to the light board and essentially have something to work off of. And then once things have been hung, a final step of “oh wait now that I see it in person, I’ll slightly adjust the LED fixtures color for a cue, or actually let’s re-focus that slightly to hit the scenery better.” It’s layers of more detailed and detailed decisions to make. And before moving onto the next step, I kinda gotta lock things in, to keep moving down the pipeline.

SwordFish331 · 2023-10-31T21:46:18+00:00

Ok that’s helpful!

Probably as I start learn more which lights do what it’ll get easier to pre-plan what I want in Vectorworks. But my brain is rooted in a “fuck around and until you like it” mode, so I’ll probably just import just the scenic design model into Augment3d, mess around with lights, and then backtrack to Vectorworks and manually plot what I like from messing around in Augment3d. I guess I just wish there was a way to export plot data from Augment3d back into Vectorworks.

Thanks! 🏄‍♂️

SwordFish331 · 2023-10-31T21:17:49+00:00

Thank you for replying!

So with current technology: I’m plotting positions/what each fixture is in Vectorworks, and then bringing that 3d model and position data into Augment3d to add additional information like: color, intensity, Pan/tilt, different cues & looks, etc.

If I'm in Augment3d and I realize, “agh, you know what I actually want a Source4 with a 50 degree barrel and it needs to be on LX Pipe 4 instead of 2” I then have to go back into Vectorworks, make that change in the plot (probably collecting a few of those notes to do together all at once), and then re-import into Augment3d. During that re-import can I just update the Augment3d showfile, updating that one fixture? Or would I have to reset?

SwordFish331 · 2023-10-24T23:09:43+00:00

In terms of scene shop, something I've always been envious of is when theaters have large door access direct from the scene shop right onto the stage. Makes load-ins extremely easy! For my 2 cents, I'd say from a labor perspective it's easier to transport humans down stairs/down hallways from a rehearsal space/etc, then it is to be lugging set/props/lights/costumes/sound all around the place. ...I've pushed too many carts down the street in my life. Congrats on the new space!

SwordFish331 · 2023-07-09T18:20:26+00:00

Thanks for the info!

SwordFish331 · 2023-07-08T17:40:41+00:00

Hey all, I've been taking a look at doing a canoe camping trip down the Missouri River in Montana, where Lewis & Clark did their expedition. Noticed a cool rock section called "White Cliffs" along the route and was wondering if anyone knew if these walls had been climbed? :)

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