There were a number of challenges to tackle in problem 3. To name a few there were slamming doors, curved walls, support concerns, and molding to bend. The problems my team focused on were the curved walls as well as support concerns.
Developing a prototype of a curved wall was necessary to decide what materials to build the wall out of. Making sure a 4×8 sheet of luaun would be able to bend the 3 foot radius helps the build team understand what they’re getting into. This test allows the TD team to provide instructions as well as understand the material that is planned to be used. The other test was performed using “wiggle wood” in order to compare the quality of the finished product. It was deemed that luaun sheets would be more than suitable for the final product as it made the 3′ radius bend with no issues. The wiggle wood on the other hand happened to warp along the middle if not placed properly.
The support concerns between the door slamming and the walls shaking proved to be a simpler fix than expected. Behind the door on stage there would be a masking wall to hide the backstage area, we would use this wall to our advantage as it would be connected to the main door flat using 1″x3″ lumber at the top of the masking flats (8′ tall). This allows our team to put jacks behind the masking wall and fully support the wall from shaking when the door is slammed.
This project was quite difficult as we would need to keep track of the costs of the flats and develop a budget of the show build. The amount of details necessary to provide to the build team so they know how each piece is to be made and joined together requires meticulous planning. Having cut lists and schedules will help the build team conduct their job quicker. Prior research and prototyping will keep the carpenters for needed to test any builds to keep their focus on completing the flats.
This project in essence is an example of planning a full show from top to bottom. Having every scenic element planned out and each problem solved before the build cuts down on labor costs and build time.
This project lacks the sense of pressure and urgency that a real world situation would provide. Another thing missing is the lack of budget as we would find the price of the show as we proceeded and would have no actual cost limit. This project technically had a bottomless wallet in terms of what we could choose to use as materials and build time. Overtime pay was also not something to worry about in this project.
This problem taught me that proper research and planning can help work get done faster than expected. Having a to-do list of things to build or how to build them gives carpenters a gague as to how quickly their work is getting done or how much work they need to get done.
I learned in this project that the scheduling of the production build can make or break deadlines. Being able to plan ahead for problems that require prototyping can save hours of headache when build starts. Having insight and experience can also help prevent the need to prototype, had our team built curved flats in a previous project we wouldn’t need to test the build and could focus on other problems at hand.
