Stretch pieces for The Shins

Awhile back, we did a project for production designer Stanley Elleflot, for The Shins, and Stanley was gracious enough to recently send us some photos.  It was one of those deceptively simple projects that turn out to be amazing in production.

Using 120″ wide FR White Stretch Fabric (similar to Cambio! fabric), we slit 12 strips of the material to a finished size of 30′ h x 18″ w.  The tops were finished with webbing, grommets & ties, as well as 1″ Velcro, while the bottoms had open pipe hems.  The sides were left unfinished.

Sounds simple, right?  Well, take a look at how dramatic these simple stretch strips look in concert:

Photo Courtesy Stanley Effelot

The strips were hung from truss at with pipes at the bottom for weight.  I think that the impact of the repeating element of the strips, along with the gorgeous lighting of yellows and oranges, is really gorgeous!  Here’s a close up shot:

Photo Courtesy Stanley Effelot and The Shins

I also love the way the lighting designer is able to constantly change the colors of the strips throughout the song in this video - check it out!   This really is a versatile option for set design, whether as the primary design for or as one element in a more complex set design.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Alice in Chains Video

You may remember that I posted last week about the Alice in Chains project.  Although I included linkes to several videos in that post, I just found out about another great video from their current tour, so I thought I’d post a brief update.  The video is a great compilation of scenes from the show.

And while I’m at it, here is another great photo!

Design: Mike Baldassari @ Mike-O-Matic Industries www.mike-o-matic.com;  Photo By: “Iron” Mike - SavoiaPhotography.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

2010 Pollstar Awards

On Wednesday, February 17, the 21st Annual Pollstar Awards were held at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live.  If you aren’t familiar with Pollstar, it is a leading trade publication for the concert industry, publishing both in print and online (I use their website almost daily - it is a great resource for information on music tours / concerts). 

Each year, Pollstar invites a group of industry professionals to provide nominations in a number of award categories, including venues, production, promotion, staging, lighting, and much more.  Once the nominations are finalized, Pollstar subscribers are invited to vote online, and the winners are announced at the ceremony.

This year, our sister company, Rent What?, was honored to be selected as the provider of rental draperies to the event.  Selected as the main drapes for the ceremony were the Moulin Rouge drapes that I have posted about before (part of Rent What’s “Timeless and Traditional” series).  These gorgeous crimson and gold pieces really are dramatic, aren’t they? 

Rent What? Inc. also provided all of the black masking drapes used for the event.  Although masking drapes are most known for onstage masking, they also are quite effective for masking sections of the seating area in larger spaces.  By masking off sections of seating, the space was transformed into an intimate setting that was especially fitting for this event.

I think the rental drapes provided a fittingly opulent and intimate setting for the presentation of these prestigious awards.  Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Alice in Chains Project

In late January, we worked on an interesting project for the 2010 tour of Alice in Chains.  The primary pieces that we made were a series of Single and Double Kabukis. 

The Double Kabuki, at 25′ h x 45′ w, was made out of Silver Poly Silk, and then the 5 Upstage Single Kabukis (all at 22′ h and ranging in width from 10′ w to 44′ w) were of a silver textured satin.  We also made a number of pieces for the stage (drum riser, amp panels and floor light coverlets) out of Black 16oz Commando Cloth lined with Aluminum Mesh, as well as some black masking drapes. 

Design: Mike Baldassari @ Mike-O-Matic Industries www.mike-o-matic.com;  Photo By: “Iron” Mike - SavoiaPhotography.com

Rent What? also provided some pieces, including a Classic Theatre Header (Red) from their Timeless and Traditional Series, along with a number of Borders in Black 15oz Encore, and furnished the 44 piece Solenoid System with controllers (used with the Kabuki Drapes).  Check out the Classic Theatre Header in this photo:

Design: Mike Baldassari @ Mike-O-Matic Industries www.mike-o-matic.com;  Photo By: “Iron” Mike - SavoiaPhotography.com

We were all really proud of how the pieces turned out, but you never know how the client will react.  Well, I am happy to report that the client loved them!  Yesterday, Megan received a thank you letter from Mike Baldassari, Production Designer for Alice in Chains, and it is such a great letter that I have to share a little bit of it: 

Dear Megan,

I’m writing to again say thank you for all of your help, hard work, expertise and most especially your “do whatever it takes” attitude in support of Alice in Chains’ current tour…. I was also impressed with the quality, workmanship and organization of the delivery of the goods that Sew What built.  You have my sincere gratitude for a job very well done, and I look forward to working with you and Sew What on other projects as well in the near future.

Best Regards,

Mike Baldassari

It is so rewarding to get such positive feedback from our clients, and to be able to share it with our employees, especially those who worked so hard on this project.

By the way, if you’d like to see Alice in Chains in action, with some of our drapery providing the backdrop, I found several videos on YouTube.  I think this one highlights (yet again) how perfect silver / gray fabric is for projection, whereas this one shows the drapery in its actual silver color at the start of the video and then shows how it can become almost any color with the proper lighting (you can also see some of the mesh pieces on stage in this video).

Note: Want to see a Kabuki Drape in action?  Check out this video.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Monsters of Folk

Rent What? got a great compliment recently from Marc Janowitz, Production Designer / Lighting Director for the Monsters of Folk tour that I posted about in early November, so I just had to pass it on.

In Morgan Loven’s article, “Monsters of Folk: Lighting from the Bottom Up,”  in the January 2010 issue of PLSN (Projection, Lights and Staging News), Marc specifically thanked Megan for stepping in at the last minute and providing rental drapes to the tour.  Marc even said that the drape provided by Rent What? was “even cooler than the one I had originally envisioned.”

I don’t know what Marc originally envisioned, but I must agree that the contour curtain that Monsters of Folk rented from Rent What? is seriously cool - and Marc’s lighting design makes it even cooler!  Great work, Marc!

The entire article is quite interesting to read, as Marc describes the process of designing a production - check it out if you get the chance.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Scrims in Schools

Recently, we got an e-mail from Leslie at Rutherford High School in Pennsylvania.  The school had purchased a custom scrim from us last month, and Leslie was raving about it - not just about the scrim itself, but about its use as a teaching tool.  As Leslie said, “Talk about a teachable moment–the day we installed it, my stagecraft students spent about 30 minutes just marvelling about how ’seriously cool’ it was!”

I hadn’t really thought about this aspect of Sharkstooth Scrim before.  Most of the time, scrims are purchased by professional theatres and music tours - those places with professional lighting technicians on staff who know how to effectively light the scrim so that its “magical” properties appear.  But the truth is, these techniques can be learned and utilized in any theatre or auditorium environment - including schools such as Ringgold High School.  It just takes a little study, practice, and the right lights.

And what a great thing to teach stagecraft students!  I remember way back when in my own high school theatre days.  While my focus was on acting rather than on stage crew, I know that I would have loved to have learned about how scrims work.  As it is, I spent the next 25 years or so marvelling at the magic on stage until I started working at Sew What? and learned the secret behind the magic.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Rent What? does the “Mark and Brian Christmas Show”

Yes, I will admit it…I am a classic rock fan, and my radio station of choice (here in the Los Angeles area) is 95.5 KLOS.  Every weekday morning on my way to work, I listen to the Mark and Brian Show (based here in L.A. on KLOS, but syndicated throughout the country).

So, after listening to M & B talk for weeks about the Christmas Show being held on December 16th at the Nokia Theatre (and wishing I could go), you can imagine how excited I was to hear that Rent What? was renting drapery to the show.

And not just any drapery…this was drapery from the Silver Satin Series.  If you are a regular reader, you know that I absolutely love the Silver Satin drapery pieces that Sew What? made for Rent What?  Most recently, I posted in November on the Silver Satin Austrian and Swags that Rent What? provided to the Maxwell tour.  Well, here they are again, looking as spectacular as ever!

Under minimal lighting, there is only a slight variation in the color (the drapes appear more of an opalescent white than a silver).

Change the lighting, and suddenly they appear red…

…or green…

Pretty amazing, don’t you think? 

I was also excited to learn about a YouTube video of the drapes.  Most of the videos that we find on YouTube that feature our drapes are shot during the show - which is great for seeing the artist, but doesn’t always give the best shots of the drapery!  That is why I was so excited to learn about this video - since it was shot during sound check for the Mark and Brian “Super Group”, there are lots of angles and closeups of the drapery.

So, here I am - the show is over and I am regretting that I didn’t buy tickets and go.  Not only would I have had the fun of attending the M & B Christmas Show in person, but I would have also gotten to enjoy the drapes in person.  Oh, well, maybe next year…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Printing for Christmas

We recently completed a 24′ h x 40′ w digitally printed project for Brian Setzer for the current “Christmas Rocks! Extravaganza” tour.  We have worked with this client before and enjoy doing their projects, and in the past have provided everything from traditional textiles to digitally printed backdrops to stage set elements.  But our most favorite time of the year is Christmas - we love to decorate and celebrate - and we always get excited about participating in Christmas shows, so this was a fun print project to tackle.

The project took one week to complete.  We did not design the artwork ourselves - instead it was build by the client’s own graphic artist as a vector file in Adobe Illustrator ®.  This was a cartoon-style graphic - lots of color and bright imagery. 

This type of graphic particularly lends itself to being digitally printed - the blues and bright tones show so well under concert stage lighting.

For this backdrop, we chose a heavy knit for two reasons.  First, in our industry, being flame retardant to national standards (at a minimum) is very important, and this material met the client’s requirements in terms of flame retardancy.  Second, knit type materials are perfect when the client needs to store the pieces folded up - when re-hung, the knit fabric relaxes and the wrinkles tend to hang out fairly well.  As you can imagine, in a stage or concert backdrop, clients don’t want to see wrinkles!

We use exclusively 3M inks with our 120″ Vutek QS3200 printer and use Colorburst for our RIP software.  I think the combination of the inks, the printer, and the software really come together for beautiful colors in the end product. 

For this project, print time took four hours, not including sewing / finishing time.  The piece was finished with webbing, grommets & ties across the top (we use a Jopevi electric grommet machine), which is a traditional backdrop finish.  The sides are durably hemmed (we prefer Consew brand commercial sewing machines) and the bottom is completed with a hidden weight pocket to help the drop hang nicely.

Offering digitally printed textiles in addition to our regular services is a benefit to our clients and allows us to keep the complete show in-house in terms of production.   I tend to post a lot about concert projects we work on - primarily because those are the projects that we can usually get photos of or find videos on YouTube.  However, as a full service sewing shop, we do produce all sorts of textile products for the theatre and stage, including traditional stage draperies, and more and more we are beginning to get request for digitally printed backdrops from schools, churches, and other non-tour customers - they really add a beautiful element to a show, and if the artwork is nice (such as a beautiful snow scene), the drop can be used at the annual holiday show for years to come.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Xmas Soft Goods for David Archuleta

Once again, both Sew What? and Rent What? were asked to provide soft goods to a single tour - David Archuleta’s Christmas 2009 tour - and I think this one turned out particularly great, as both companies thought “outside the box” to create some unique pieces for the show based on a fabulous set design created by Butch Allen.

Rent What? provided the drapery - in this case it included Gold Lightweight Synthetic Velour Legs and Swags from their “Timeless and Traditional” Series, all wrapped up with giant red and gold bows for a perfect Christmas presentation. 

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

What I think takes the drapery to another level, though,  is the incredible “twinkle-light” drape.  We’ve made traditional LED Star Drops before, but this drape was different .  For this drape, low resolution twinkle lights were inserted into a sheer white voile - the result is just gorgeous and reminds me of snow falling.

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

Sew What? also got in the act, making some gold satin skirts along with some fun three-dimensional Christmas Trees out of White Cambio! stretch fabric.  There were five trees, ranging in from 8′ to 16′ in height, and depending on how they were lit, they appear gold/white, blue/white, or green.  Here’s how they look in green:

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

All in all, the combination of the beautiful drapery provided by Rent What? and the fun Christmas Trees provided by Sew What? sets the stage for a fun and festive holiday show.  Want to see more photos?  Check out the Concerts and Curtains Photostream on Flickr.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Swags and Digitals for the Eagles

Recently, both Sew What? and Rent What? had the opportunity to contribute custom stage drapery to The Eagles West Coast Tour, which opened on Monday in Portland, OR.

Production designer Butch Allen send us some rehearsals photos of our drapes on set - and I think they are just amazing!    Take a look at these Silver Swags from Rent What? :

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

Also included in the rental package provided by Rent What? was a 24′ h x 50′ w backdrop, digitally printed by Sew What? to give the appearance of parchment (see the background in the photo above), as well as black masking pieces.

The tour also purchased a 24′ h x 24′ w custom digitally printed backdrop from Sew What?  Printed on clear vinyl, the clock image is dramatic while still allowing a view of the parchment backdrop behind it (as above).  Clever lighting in another scene makes the clock appear blue:

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

More clever lighting, and somehow the drapery looks completely different:

Design: Butch Allen Designs; Photo Credit: Butch Allen

I can’t decide which of these three photos is my favorite; all three are just so beautiful.  Butch has created a wonderful set design, and I am so proud that Sew What? and Rent What? were brought on board to bring Butch’s vision to life. 

The show is in Seattle tonight, and then goes to Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles, before finishing up in San Diego on December 21st.  So, if you happen to get to one of the shows - check out the drapery and let me know what you think!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!