A weblog about theatrical drapery and stage curtains for Production Managers, Set Designers, Custom Drapery Resellers, and local/school/church Productions
Hi there everyone reading this blog! My name is Marianne, and I’m the newest member to join the team at Rent What? They’ve asked me to help give new insight and a fresh perspective to our blog, and I am thrilled to do so!
First, let me tell you a little bit about my background. I’ve been an event planner for over 10 years, with the last three years working primarily as a wedding planner and coordinator in Las Vegas, Nevada. After moving back out to Southern California, I knew I wanted to stay in the field of planning events, but wasn’t sure exactly which angle I would choose. Once I heard about Rent What? Inc., and their amazing products and business model, I knew I had to be a part of this female owned and operated company! Now I get to help plan events, concerts, productions, trade shows, festivals, tours, and other special occasions through an aspect that I truly love—production design! Through creative use of rental stage drapes, pipe and drape systems, kabuki drops, track systems, and all different styles of fabrics and textures, we can create any look and feel that our clients want, and to me that is absolutely amazing.
Being a part of this “family” has been a dream come true for me, and I am honored and grateful to be a part of something so wonderful. I hope to help give you some of my perspective as someone who is both a long-standing member of this industry, as well as a “newbie” to this specific field. I can’t wait to share with you everything I learn about this fascinating and exciting business!
I have posted about the wide variety of specialty drapery collections that Rent What? has available for rent, from “Rockin’ Red” to “Industrial Textures” to “Delightfully White” and beyond. At Rent What? we have tried to think “outside the box” to continually re-imagine soft goods and stage decor to create interesting and beautiful new drapery options for our clients.
Today, I want to give you a sneak preview of our newest specialty collection, the “Swanky Collection.” We have just added the first piece in the collection, and it is definitely something different. Rather than a traditional custom stage curtain made of fabric, instead this piece is actually a series of individual linear pieces composed of mirrored plates suspended on invisible threads.
Each thread of mirrored plates is separate and distinct – different heights, different placement of mirrored plates – allowing a completely customizable dazzling linear mobile. By attaching each thread to a different location on the stage truss, you can create a unique mobile “drape” for every show.
I am so excited about this new piece. I hope you like it as much as I do. Stand by as we add more “Swanky” pieces to the collection – I’ll keep you posted.
Creating mood and taking a crowd to another place at a show is the ultimate goal of designing a concert experience. People often only think of stage lights in terms of the trusses that hang over the stage to create color and sometime patterns.
One thing you might want to consider in the planing stages is the use of lights through cutouts in your printed backdrop. We can print directly to opaque and see through mesh materials. Integrating both materials buy cutting out either structured shapes (windows, doors) or more random free form shapes (abstract patterns, eyes?) and then bringing the entire piece together to create awesome effects, glows and ambience. Be it a sunset effect, lights in the windows of a building or glowing eyes, etc… its up to your imagination.
Sometimes you really want to make elements in your backdrop seem huge. At the end of the day, we all have limits to the height we can go to in most venues.
One thing that can help create the illusion of great height is to illustrate the main elements of you backdrop in forced perspective. What this means in the clearest terms is to illustrate in a way that creates an optical illusion that an object is nearer or farther away, larger or smaller than it actually is. This may be most effective with a building, mountain etc. This creates a feeling of great space or confined quarters to help pull off the feeling you’re looking for with your stage.
I’d be happy to talk to you about how forced perspective can help you.
Recently, Rent What? had the honor to be selected by Dell Computers to be featured in an online video on America’s Favorite Small Business. It was a great opportunity for Megan and Marce and all the folks at Rent What? to discuss the committment that the company has to provide high quality, innovative custom stage curtains and hardware for rental.
I think the folks at Dell did a great job in capturing what it is like to run a small business, ensuring that your business is well run and your customers are provided the highest quality product along with the best customer service possible. As the Rent What? motto goes, “Ultimate Rentals. Extreme Service.”
Something that can give a stage a great deal of depth is the planning and integration of real world objects in front of a printed backdrop. It takes some coordination and planning can help pull off the effect but the end result is worth it.
Case in point, we did an illustration of a steam punk machine complete with all the cogs, wheels, bells and whistles for Motley Crue. ( you can see it on the header of the graphic design page on sewwhatinc.com)
The stage designer used huge barrels, copper tubes, oil drums and alike placed strategically in front of the printed piece to pull off a dark, fire breathing mad science steam punk effect.
People still come up to me and tell me how much they loved that stage. Isn’t that what it’s all about. A memorable experience.
Earlier this year we were contacted by Jason Bishop, illusionist extraordinaire, regarding our Metal Mesh drapery. He felt it had just the right look to complement his amazing illusions. The textures are terrific, and the ability to light it in different colors gives it so much versatility. After working with Sew What? Account Manager Gwen Winter, Jason chose to purchase a custom 25′ h x 45′ w Metal Mesh Drape, fashioned as a Tear-Away for that quick “magical” reveal.
Well, last week Jason contacted us again to rave about the drape. He sent us photos of the drape on stage with The Jason Bishop Show. They’re terrific photos – check them out!
Recently I was asked to create a custom wood texture and wood beams for a Kid Rock’s Born Free tour stage. The end product is a full blown Kid Rock Saloon set complete with branded, burned in Jim Beam(tm) logos and so on. This set looks like a real wood, old time western saloon. The effect is killer. The best part about this set is all the wood is actually printed fire proofed fabric. Every stair case, riser and even the bar itself is all covered in fabric that looks like thick, heavy wood beams.
For those of you that are reading this that deal with the logistics of moving a show from town to town, set up and tear down, you understand what a time saver, labor saver and money saver this is. What would normally take four men and thirty minutes to do now takes two men a few minutes because they’re not disassembling huge ridged panels. Not to mention less weight/ less fuel costs and so on. Something to think about. We can digitally create Wood, stone, Brick and Block or whatever you need and give you an awesome looking stage.
