Stage Designs

Picture Frame

Sarah Comer from City Impact Church in New Zealand brings us this theatrical piece for their Easter event, Portrait of a Hero.

The series went through history, meeting different heroes. So they constructed a photo frame that they placed actors in and projected onto. For each hero that projected onto a screen, then dropped the screen to reveal a scene from that era. The actor would then act out the hero’s journey.

The foundation of the frame was made from timber and had MDF mounted to it. It stood 4.5meters (14.7ft) high and was 7.3meters wide (23 ft). The MDF was then covered in fake flowers, plastic mixing bowls (for the corners) and the painted gold.

It was hung from 6 meters of black truss and screwed to the boxing/staging to stablize it. They made smaller frames between 1.2 x 1.5 meters and hung them with fishing line.

Tip: Careful not to hang anything too heavy from fishing line or it stretches. Also hang fishing line close to lights.

To take it a step further they decided to create a mechanism to lower and raise the screen so they could project onto it. They created a simple pulley system where two people could just pull it up and drop it. They attached spandex to a length of scaff so the screen could drop quickly. To mask the bang they had when they dropped the screen the used sound effects and lighting.

To light the frame they used 4 Source4’s from about 45 degrees to create depth on the detail of the frame. They attached scaff behind the frame to mount cans for different lighting for each scene. They created some cheap crowd washes with 25 500w builders lights and just wrapped gels over them. All of this was done on a tight budget.

 

Floating Blocks Make a Ripple

One response to “Picture Frame”

  1. Justin says:

    This is just TOO cool!

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