Monday, February 27th
Over the weekend, I went out and bought the fabric for the rolling unit, which will be painted later in the week. The day was spent doing touch ups on the rolling unit, and continuing on the van. The crew was split up into teams of 2-3 people. Each group either painted all the flats black, sanded off the labeling on the sonotubes, routing out handles on the rehearsal blocks, and/or spiking the theater floor for the placements of the flats. As everyone broke off to do their tasks, I began working on the van.
The Dodge van is technically a prop item, but I asked if I could work on it. Before building it, I had to do research on the van to find out dimensions of certain aspects. The van will be used as a prop to the hand puppet versions of the burglars, Harry and Marv. To ensure that the van and its inner components are scaled correctly, I had to research the actual van that was used for the film, and figure out the proportion of the actual size to the scaled down version. Once that was figured out, I was able to complete the drafting, and begin the build process.
The first step was to draw out the front and sides of the van (Figure 1). Since the van has to be lightweight but sturdy, I used 1/4″ lauan for the frame. In order to cut the centers out to make the “windows,” I had to drill holes in each corner then use a jigsaw to cut them out (Figure 2). Once everything was cut, I reassembled all the pieces by using clamps, to make sure that everything fits together (Figure 3).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
