Stage Designs

Brick!

Paul Smollen from La Croix United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau, MO brings us a rustic look in a modern church environment.

They came up with this set for the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit simulcast in August of 2012. The idea was to make their space more inviting, warmer, and smaller.

They bought some high-res brick weathered brick images and photo-shopped an uneaven edge to soften the outside border of the image. Then, they projected it over the top of the 2 rear-projection screens and across the surrounding wall. For most of the event, the side screens were blank to keep attention focused on the main center screen. This gave a much nicer look than blank screens during the event. During breaks or when they wanted to show site information and announcement slides, the rear projection was powerful enough to punch through the image and it looked great.

They also carved some fake-brick out of pink insulating foam and used it to trim out several architectural-looking stage flats. They lit the two different sections of the flats with color-changing elipsoidal lights shuttered to the exact shape. Also they printed a Summit banner and lit it with shuttered elipsoids to give clean, sharp color to the flats. Then, they finished with some colored spots on the floor.

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4 responses to “Brick!”

  1. Chris says:

    Im wondering how to make the brick from the foam ? any resources on how i can learn?

    • Karen says:

      The easiest thing I have found is to use a hot knife with the 4″ thick insulation foam. We are working with 4 ft. x 8 ft. sheets for our youth band backdrops that we will finish in December. There are several blade styles available for good hot knives. I recommend the U shape blade for creating the grouting for the bricks. You’ll have to paint the foam with house paint as spray paint will melt the foam, but you can do some really neat things with it. Paint the grout area first with a paint brush, then roll the brick part with a red brick or tan brick color. Using a rag, you can speckle on white or brown to the wet paint to make a rougher, weathered look to the brick. Good luck!

    • Anthony Rice says:

      you can buy a Hot knife like this one http://www.hotwiredirect.com/products/hot-knife/ with different tools they work great we use them all the time.

  2. paul smollen says:

    Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly the process we used but we used a 2″ think pink foam cut to the sizes we needed and used a wood block to trace around as a brick template. When the hot knife work was done, we took the pieces outside and laid them face down on the gravel and stomped and ground them into the rocks to give them a rough, weathered look. This process gave a totally authentic brick look and was so much cheaper than purchasing a faux brick product. We painted the grout with latex paint and a paint brush and then painted the brick color with latex paint and a roller.

    Paul

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