Paul Kaiser's Blog

The problem

A bunch of different people who may or may not know one another, all trying to grasp the same aesthetic concept and build something safe, functional, and beautiful on a limited budget without much time. Oh, and they might be 3 hours apart.

How many times have you seen this?

Visual communications

One of the easiest ways to bring people together and make sure your design is at least close to being understood is to make it visual. Your adjectives and adverbs may differ from person to person, but when it comes down to it, a square is a square is a square.

So we draw it out.

This can be effective initially, but unless you’re Joe Pro, you probably won’t get the scale right, and you’ll think your stage is about twice as big as it really is.

Nota: Just a hack

By the way, since I mentioned “Joe Pro,” let me throw in the aside here and acknowledge that I’m just a hack. Every now and then someone gives me the opportunity to work on a set, and I snatch it up, because I love this stuff. I’d do it for free, 12 hours a day. I wish there were some way to make it a career.

Instead, I just keep on hacking, and enjoying every last minute of it.

Holy crap — that won’t fit there

So your pencil sketches rock, and you feel you’re half way there, and you start trying to figure out how to actually build these platforms and pieces without asking Sally Struthers to do fundraising charity commercials for you.

Oops. The stage is 40 feet wide, right? Hmm… you have 48 feet of stuff you want to string across it.

Google Sketchup to the rescue

On my current project, I used Google Sketchup to try preventing this problem. The theatre is 3 hours away, I haven’t been there for 15 years, and I don’t know any of the people who are putting it together. This project is very important to me, but so many aspects are out of my control, I could easily freak out. Google Sketchup let me grasp at least a few known, definite things — dimensions — and try working with the director before things get out of hand.

Front view, to scale, with perspective

Our first concern with the pencil sketches was that the stage would be too empty. I’m pretty sure the Sketchup models are putting that fear to rest.

Top view, to scale, with perspective

While I’m not certain, I also think the Sketchups are going to make our backdrop decision, one way or the other. There’s a cyclorama in both theatres (Oh, I didn’t mention that the set has to be portable so the show can move, did I?) We recently were thinking of nixing the backdrops, but after looking at the front view Sketchup, I’m not so sure.

Free tools that rock

We’re out of time, folks. The point I was trying to get at is that Google Sketchup is there, it is free, it is easy to use, and can really help the design process. What would really rock is if each theatre had base Sketchup models already built and ready for download, so set designers could just grab them and go.

However, I suppose the Pros have a better way. After all, remember — I’m just a happy hacker.