creative fuZion lab – set designs that will never exist

mood: creative!
music: The Sound of Arrows – M.A.G.I.C.

So, I was invited (I think) by Dorthy from Designing for Philistines to share some of my set design stuff. Obviously, I have a passion for lighting and set design, but I don’t attend a church where I get to use those skills. (Our facility is rented, and really small, not really “about” sets at all.) But that’s okay – I have the wonderful SketchUp software from Google, which is where I design all my stuff. I do this mostly for fun, and also to help push myself creatively to come up with stuff from just a piece of artwork or a word. And this week’s design is from the current Mosaic Nashville series, Resurgence.

This is the original artwork chosen for this series. My immediate thought was “The dark browns and cross don’t really make me think of resurgence.” (With apologies to whomever chose / designed that bit of art.) The giant R, in particular, looks almost like it was just dropped in there. So I pulled out my little $2 notebook and started thinking about what “resurgence” meant. For those playing the home game, here’s the dictionary definition:

1. A continuing after interruption; a renewal.
2. A restoration to use, acceptance, activity, or vigor; a revival.

So, restoration, renewal, rebirth are synonyms, or at least, closely related to the concept we’re trying to convey. My immediate thought to a real-life example was spring (as in the season) – after everything goes dormant for the winter, spring is a time of re-birth, for plants and animals alike. The most set-friendly of these two is plants, so I decided to run with that theme. My initial sketches had the tall, vertical square columns and a definite trend of things going “up”, and sunlight / windows.

I knew I was going to go with a visual metaphor using plants and the outdoors, but I wasn’t sure which direction to go. Initially, I had thought about a sort of Japanese aesthetic, using minimalist lines inspired from the artwork found in kakemono (hanging scrolls) and ikebana flower arrangements¹. Instead, I wanted to go brighter and more cheery, hence the decision to use my favorite color: yellow! The color of sunshine, sunflowers, and lemonade. Before I got too far into the set design, though, I went ahead and redid the artwork as a sort of “guide” when picking colors and images to use in the stage.

My initial design (Which was scribbled on a church handout…never give the responsibility of taking notes to a doodler.) had large vertical blocks with the thin sides pointing toward center stage, which I screwed around with for quite some time trying to make it look right. Which it did not.

This design was obviously not very practical – I hadn’t taken audience sight lines into consideration, and while the design looks neat if you’re orbiting around it, the audience would be able to look at it from one angle, since they’d be sitting in seats. So I cut down the number of columns, and somehow hit on the idea of making things come out toward the audience. So we turned the columns out toward the audience and made them curvy. and And hence the hockey sticks and windows were born.

Then I had to decide on texture for the columns. I went through like a million variants before settling on a simple brushstroke motif for them. The background for the set was done in the GIMP using the same brushes I used on the artwork. The point of the windows is to place lights (moving or otherwise) behind them and let the light stream through the windows for a sunshine-like effect. The fabric would have to be pretty thin to get the right effect, but I think it could be done. I also had vague ideas for some sort of rotating gobos or effects light to project flying birds every now and then, or have some leaves gently dropping from the ceiling (pre-service only, for obvious reasons) for extra fun. And hey, as long as we’re giving ourselves unlimited budgets for production, why not? 😛

After all that was done, it was a simple matter to add in “actors”, model the stage a bit, and add some trussing. And viola! The finished product:

Exit, stage left.
Sparks

^{1. I cannot believe I just typed those words. Please excuse the extreme horned-rimmed-glasses-wearing-art-student-pretentiousness of that last sentence.}