Build Period, Fit Up and Evaluation
The set we created had a golden rectangle frame. So, we carved hinges on each piece of frame, using a hand held electronic jigsaw, so that we could wood glue and screw it together into a rectangular frame. To do this we measured a square piece of about 10cm-by-10cm-by-1cm piece off the end of each piece of wood, and calved it from the wood, then placed each hinge together so that they fit each other perfectly and we could glue and screw them together. After this we painted it a golden colour and chopped it in half so that the van could transport it to the Old Rep.
The day came to fit up and we got in the theatre early, we put up 2x2 set of steel decking, very low to the ground, and placed a red fabric pattern over the front to cover the steel decking up. The red cloth went well with our golden frame which we put up soon after we used braces to keep it up and kept it steady by drilling it to the ground.
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When fitting up the set, we had to wear hard hats due to the size of the wooden frame and the potential of it falling on someone, we also wore steel toe capped boots to protect our feet from a potential fall of the frame and to protect our feet from colliding with the low steel deck on stage, as stubbing your toe on steel deck, hurts. There was a small schedule made by the production managers that is shown on the right, this allowed the production managers to effectively communicate with the crew and get them in a efficient working schedule to keep everyone on track while also working ass efficient as possible.
I also fixed and painted the same bar we used in the Witcher project, with the second half of it now missing, I had to fix the missing piece on the corner of the bar. To do this, I took a plank of wood and placed it on the corner as far as it would go, using a ruler and pencil, I drew out where I needed to cut to get a piece of wood that fit the corner of the bar and did not stick out or make the bar look ugly. We chopped the plank of wood along the drawn lines with a jigsaw cutter and drilled it into the corner of the bar. After this, we used filler to fill in the cracks between the new piece and the rest of the bar to ensure it did not look too ugly; Then we painted it the same oak like colour, I also wood grained the bar with the wood grain comb, this really gave it the nice crisp oak wood texture and made the bar look great.
The Escape room project taught me a lot about working in a crew and how important every role is, while also letting me develop my construction skills. When building the golden frame, we had originally planned to drill holes in it to place lights around the frame to make it bright and really bring out the golden texture. However this idea was scrapped due to the amount of fixtures we were already using, the Lighting Designer told us that we could not afford to put more lights in their rig. Compared to Alice, the amount of set that needed to be done was considerably less; I felt a if it was a lot less stressful as it was a much smaller production and it was my second time doing a production so I felt a lot more confident. The only thing I believe should of been changed was the amount of set we had, we had almost nothing to build for the Escape Room, so next time I would have pushed for more set to be in the project.