Translucency Time!

The final and the most labor intensive layer to the back wall of the Unfortunates set is a full-stage translucent drop.   The fun part is that it is slightly more complicated than a traditional translucency.



The drop will be lit from the front with white light and lit from behind with red light.  When lit from the front, the picture needs to be in greyscale and when lit from behind with the red light, only some parts are red, while others need to stay in greyscale.  This means that there need to be both translucent and opaque parts to the drop that transition softly into each other.  On top of all that, it is a very architectural piece- lots of windows, doors, chair rail, et cetera.  What an adventure!

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In this picture of Scenic Designer Sibyl Wickersheimer's elevations, we see how the drop will appear when lit from behind and in front, respectively, and we see how in the red elevation, some parts need to remain opaque white.  

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Measuring 65 by 17 feet, this drop took four people and two days to starch both sides and an extra day to cartoon.  


Right, our intern, Erin Young, does some scenic math to divide these windows perfectly.  

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The next step was to paint the entire drop in translucent greyscale.  
As you can see in this picture, we had to paint from the rendering showing us wich parts would be translucent, and thus showing up as red when lit from behind.  On top of that, in order to make the white step as opaque as it needs to be in the next step, everything that is going opaque white needed to go opaque black first. SO.... So what we are doing is painting everything we see as red on the rendering as variances in the black's translucency, and everything we see as white we are painting straight black.

Confused yet?

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So far  we have completed the translucent layer.  Next week we will put the opaque white layer on top to complete the drop- more pictures to come!

I'm really proud of how far we've gotten in only a few days.  It's a real testament to the industriousness of our crew.  Good work, scenic artists Amanda Haverick and  Kira Nehmer and intern Erin Young!

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