Scenic Design and Lighting Techniques

A Basic Guide for Theatre

Rob Napoli, Chuck Gloman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136084935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Basic. This is the key word in Scenic Design and Lighting Tecniques: A Basic Guide for Theatre, written by two seasoned professionals with over twenty years of experience. This book is designed to show you how to turn a bare stage into a basic set design, without using heavy language that would bog you down. From materials and construction to basic props and lighting, this book explains all you will need to know to build your set and light it.

Section 1 Building The Set

DOI: 10.4324/9780080465050-1

Chapter 1 The Basic Scenic Building Blocks

DOI: 10.4324/9780080465050-2

Let's face it. There are really only two basic scenic forms that all sets are made from: vertical and horizontal. Of the two most basic and familiar forms, we call the vertical ones flats and the horizontal ones platforms. Any variation of shape, structure, or design does not alter the fact that we have to have something vaguely horizontal for people to stand on and something sort of vertical behind them to create a believable environment to tell our stories. Even if you were to find the perfect location with the right size and shape of interior and you put your talent in front of one of those perfect walls, for our purposes it's just an overbuilt flat.

In this chapter we discuss flats, platforms, and drops and backings.

Flats

Why a Flat?

Why do they call these things flats? No one really knows for sure. A wall is one of the most familiar objects that flats are meant to represent. Walls aren't the only thing that flats can represent, but for this discussion we'll use them as an example.

Perhaps for this reason, flats are quite often rectangular or square, to imitate a wall's shape. Flats also create the illusion of a wall's solidity but use less structure, cost less, and take less time to build. To get a better understanding of how this is achieved, let's look at a flat more closely.

The main difference between a wall and a flat derives from our need to make scenery lighter and more portable than a wall. Walls are meant to be permanent. Walls are often built where they are meant to stand. They get stored in the structure they are holding upright, right where you left them last (if not, you may be in big trouble). Quite often the scenery is built somewhere other than where the scenery is used; it gets stored until it's needed, it gets loaded, transported, and then set up in its final location. To do all this we don't build flats the way a wall is built; their construction is more compact, or flat.

Hmm…. Could this reveal the name's origin? But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's look at the types of flats. Flats can be grouped in two different ways: by their covering and by their structure. We'll start with the type of covering.

Covering: Soft Versus Hard Flats

Flats can be covered in two ways, with a hard material and with a soft material. These types of flats are named by the type of covering, i.e., hard-cover flats or soft-cover flats. Soft-cover flats are the ones the average person is most familiar with. Hard-cover flats are more of an industry specialty.

Soft-Cover Flats

Whether we're talking about the type of flat you used in high school or the ones you see on TV sitcoms when they go backstage, this type is pretty much thought of as the quintessential flat (see Figure 1.1). Its structure is not unlike that of an artist's canvas, a cloth covering stretched over a wooden frame.

Advantages of the Soft-Cover Flat

• It is light. It may look like a wall from the front, but the fabric covering adds comparatively little weight.
• Because of its weight, it can shift (move into place on stage) and be braced easily, making quick scene changes and setups possible.
• It is cheap. Depending on the type of covering, these flats are relatively inexpensive to build and recover.
• Because the covering is similar to an artist's canvas, it's a medium that is easily painted, allowing the scenic artist a variety of finishes.
• Because the covering is soft, it can be removed, stored, and restretched or replaced easily, allowing the frame to be recycled.

Disadvantages of the Soft-Cover Flat

• Because of the soft covering, the flat works like a sail when air currents are disturbed nearby (e.g., someone walking behind it or slamming a door next to it). While this movement is not noticeable on a theatrical stage, it can be quite obvious in television and film.
• Any appliqués, which are anything you would add to the surface of the flat, such as molding or hung pictures, require additional structure behind the flat, increasing build time.
• Sometimes the flat structure creates a lump that snags the paint of a not-too-careful scenic artist, much in the way a crayon rubbing over thin paper reveals the texture of a leaf or tombstone, someone's head, or whatever you can get underneath it.
• By its nature, the surface material tends toward translucency. When backlighting the set, additional steps must be taken to prevent light transmission, such as back painting (literally painting the back of the flat with black paint or another color to make it opaque) and double covering (putting a second covering on the backside of the flat).
• While these flats may last for years, one out-of-control piece of scenery at some later time and you have a gaping hole that's not easy to fix.

Figure 1.1 The quintessential flat.

Hard-Cover Flats

Hard-cover flats are the next step in adding believability to our imitation wall. The idea is the same; it is an attempt to create a lighter, more portable version of a wall. This version takes the idea of solidity to the next level (see Figure 1.2). Its frame may be similar to that for the soft cover, but the surface material, as its name states, is hard, which opens up a variety of possibilities in creating the needed illusion of reality.

Figure 1.2 A hard-cover flat.

Advantages of the Hard-Cover Flat

• Its surface is hard. The surface-movement problem faced by the soft cover doesn't apply here. These flats can be walked behind, doors can slam, you may even lean against them without moving the surface.
• The surface is naturally opaque, eliminating the light leaks found with soft flats.
• The surface isn't like a painter's canvas. It's more like a wall. The texture for the most part is consistent and doesn't reveal the structure under it.
• The hard covering allows a variety of surface treatments. Whereas paint is the major treatment for a soft cover, the hard cover can easily hold wallpaper, stucco, even appliqués such as molding and hung picture frames and in most cases without additional structure.
• Depending on the surface treatment, the flat is more durable. And while the surface treatment may chip, the flat covering itself is less likely to become damaged than a soft covering.

Disadvantages of the Hard-Cover Flat

• It is heavier. In a soft-cover flat, most of the weight is in its structure. In a hardcover flat you may have the same structure, but the hard surface has added half to twice the weight in some cases. The additional weight also makes the flat harder to shift and set up.
• It is more expensive. Depending on the type of covering, the surface materials in a hard-cover flat are more prone to price increases.
• You can't recover a hard-cover flat as easily as a soft-cover flat. It's almost easier to make a new flat, especially if you've added a textured surface treatment such as stucco.

Here is where the flat story can get a bit more complicated. As previously mentioned, there is an additional way to classify flats. This classification is according to the flat's frame type. Let's begin with that “quintessential flat” we spoke of earlier.

Standard Versus Hollywood Frame

The soft-cover flat we spoke of has a traditional frame type known as the theatrical, standard frame, or face frame flat (see Figure 1.3). Traditionally, it's made of %”-thick wood that's approximately 2½″ wide on its face and whatever length is required for the flat's height and width.

As we stated before, fabric is stretched over this frame and triangular blocks of plywood or luaun called corner blocks are added in the corners and over any other joints for added rigidity. In this way the overall structure is approximately 1” thick. However, and this is where things get a little sticky, quite often this frame type is given a hard surface. Obviously doing this will increase the flat's thickness by the thickness of the hard cover. As you may have guessed, we will call this type of flat a hard-cover standard flat.

Figure 1.3 A face frame flat.

Advantages of the Standard Frame

• It is thin. Even with a ¼″ hard cover increasing the flat's thickness to approximately l″, many flats can be stored back to back or face to face on edge in a relatively small space.
• Its thickness also makes it an ideal pi...