Picture is a representation of a counterweighted fly system which is what Winthrop as well as Town have.
Hi All,
This is going to be a bit long...
So as far as thursday and Friday go, I did a lot of painting, then building, then flying things, then some more painting and then some more building. It's never-ending, lol.
So as for yesterday (Monday). Danny thought summer camp was starting this week so he had me come in around noon yesterday only to find out that it doesn't start till next week. So Yesterday was a short day. In 3hrs Danny and I built a 16x24 foot wall... I could be wrong about my dimensions all I know is that this thing is Huge. It actually worked quite well. We would add weight to the fly system to accomidat for the weight of the flats (wall pieces that go together to form a single wall) then we would screw them together as they were hanging. Then we would put gaff tape (tape that has thread woven into it so that it will stick to just about anything but doesn't leave a residue like duct tape). I don't recall taping seams between flats then painting over them at Winthrop but I didn't really do much in terms of painting on sets more than just doing a base coat.
So once we got the seams taped and I painted over the tape we would go add more weight and fly it out (or up) so that we could add more flat pieces. Not bad for two people and 3hrs I thought. Also I got to get in the gini lift. It was soo cool. The one here is completely operated by the person in the lift. In the one at Winthrop you could get yourself up, but you couldn't get yourself down or move yourself around. In this one you can. It's something I'd have to do more of to not be nervous in it, it had a tendency to jerk. Oh and I also met Paula, she works at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. She brought something for Danny for props and they were talking about outdoor theater and evidently I'm going to be doing some stuff with them this summer too. It sounds neat, we're talking about working in the mornings though like 7am to noon because it gets too hot and it's outdoor theatre. All kinda cool stuff going on. So that was yesterday.
Today I arrived at 9:30-ish and we immediately go up to the platform and my job is to act as weight while standing on a brace (or jack as Danny called it). I thought this part took Forever but what was going on was that for whatever reason, our platform is about an inch different in height from one side to the other. So my weight was doing two things at the same time. One it was helping the flat to fall down and lean backward. The reason for this is that the wall is 16 feet tall (almost 3x my height) so this thing could easily tip forward, kinda scary. So we got one side removed from the pipe then I get off that jack and go to the other one. Well a few minutes into the process there is a yell from Danny then a clang to my left (I was facing up stage) then there is another loud clang kind of over-head then to my left.
So after we finished getting the wall secured we went over and investigated what had happened. If we've got something heavy hanging in a spot for a little while what we'll do is put a pipe in between the two ropes of the fly system then twist the pipe around and push it between the metal bars that make up the fly rail. Well what happened today was that we had the wall secured to the pipe by having a large reinforced piece of lumber attached to the pipe by bolts and chain then we screwed the wall to the piece of lumber. I'm not sure why but Danny was using a sawzaw to remove the wall from the piece of lumber. I'm not really sure what he was doing, I was on the floor holding the wall from falling forward. So when the wall was detached enough from the pipe the pipe shot up to the grid because the weight on the arbor (the thing holding the weight) was not being balanced by the weight of the wall, the pipe that was wrapped up in the rope came loose then the pipe shot up and the weights came crashing down. Needless to say, we made a lot of noise and I'd be lieing if I said I wasn't scared.
The fly system is something I have a pretty decent understanding of but the idea of flying heavy things above my head still makes me wary. The other part was, I couldn't go anywhere. If I were to go upstage it would be a 6 or 7ft drop to the floor and if I were to go downstage the wall would fall on me so the best place for me to be was right where I was. I bet it was a bit more scary for Danny up where he was. So what did I learn from this experience?
If you're going to do something like this, you should remove the extra weight before it completely detaches.
Other than that excitement this morning before lunch, we moved and electric downstage two pipes and then hung doors on the back wall and then hung doors and installed molding on the wall for the hallway/Miss Hanigan's office. It's coming right along.
Not sure what we're going to be up to tomorrow but I hope it's not a exciting
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