From Stage Crew Chief land, part deux

Day two at Mallory's went quite well.  After getting all the designs down on the flats and finishing up building and base coating the stonewall flats, we called it day.  Day two got off to a rainy start, so we had to wait for things to clear up a bit before continuing on our adventure.  Once we did however, we got a lot accomplished.  The second coat of paint for the stonewall flats went down, with us using a sponge roller to create texture for the stones.  My fellow artiste and I worked on the two larger Room of Requirement junk flats, since they had less design work to be painted in.  It took the whole afternoon, about 5 hours, to finish up painting all the details on these two flats.  I was so grateful to have her there, since she was much more astute with mixing paints to make certain colors and etc.  Again, I have to reiterate my respect for designers.  I know that there is a whole lot of work that goes into the creations that we have the privilege to act in front of or move around, but I did not know exactly how much until I started trying to do it for myself.  I know that I will leave all of that up to the designers themselves, but a big thank you to all of you for making it look so easy!

So that was the summary of my weekend down at Mallory's.  In the mean time, she has had various cast/crew members helping her out down there as well to help finish up the painting and building of the flats.  HOWEVER, as these things usually go, we have had a rather interesting wrench thrown into our plans.  Mallory informed me the other day that the Leaky Con people informed her that at the back of our stage is a line of LED screens that are right up against the stage.  Well, the plan was to have the taller, stonewall flats up against the back of the stage and have room for the actors to walk around and enter through them.  Now, we do not know if we have that space, which is a problem.  And, since Mallory needs as much of the 16ft wide stage as she can have, we can't have the flats on stage with room to walk behind.  However, Mallory has a friend who is making the designs that we are using into pictures for the LED screens so we can have some background.  But, as I'm sure most people know, lights like to reflect off of/bleach out screens sometimes.  So after that long, complicated description, my plan, and now the overall plan, is to air on the side of not being left without a set and we are doing both.  Once we get to Leaky we will know a lot more, so right now, we are going to finish up the actual physical set and all the props to go with it, but also have the designs for the LED screens, just in case.  Foolproofing it seemed like the best idea, and so here we go.  As the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.  I am going back down to Mallory's this weekend, so I will have more to report after that  and then on to Leaky we will go...one week from Monday.  I am equally parts terrified and excited, since I have never done anything quite like this before.