More Construction!

We've made some pretty solid progress in the past couple days for the construction of our set. Today we were able to put up and brace all of the walls for our "winter world", along with 2 of the walls for the room where the opening sequence, and band sequence occur! We rented a scissor lift that reaches up to 26 feet, which has been pretty awesome to work with.

Below is a picture of us putting up the 4th panel of the first building for the winter set. This will be painted tomorrow to resemble a warm gray sandstone building with some soot across it.



Below is a picture of the scissor lift in action that we've been using, in addition to a picture of the "brick" wall that is placed next to the stone one:





The final thing that we accomplished today was the construction of two of the walls creating the cabin like interior of the room bordering the winter world:



And finally, a shot from the other side of this wall; we constructed a functioning wooden door to go between the room and what is to be the city sidewalk:



More pictures are on the way, as we continue building the set. The next couple days should be really exciting, as the set will start developing much more on the artistic level!

- Chris Amos '10: Director

Construction Has Begun!

We have recently begun the construction of our set! We moved into a 2500 sq. ft. warehouse this past Tuesday in Waukegan. All of our lumber was delivered this Tuesday as well, and we have been working really hard nonstop. Since then, we have framed out almost the entire set. Below is one of the blueprints for one of the walls for the opening room / room where the band sequence takes place:



Here is the basic frame with studs for this wall, built in the warehouse. It measures 12 x 12 x 12 feet:



This is only one of several walls we have built so far, and this is only the beginning of the set itself. Here's a picture of me (Chris Amos), Rob Runyeon, and Trevor Ewen, one of the members of the build crew, constructing a fully functioning door to be placed on one of the walls of the room:



3 of these walls put together (with the frame for a window in one, and a door in the other) makes a pretty cool looking start to a room. Below is a picture of the 3 walls, all propped against the wall of the warehouse. It gives a good gauge of the sheer size of these rooms. Having 12 foot tall walls for such a small room is going to give a really awesome look to this scene. The look is designed to be a Tim Burton - esque, fairy tale environment. It's a little blurry, but again, it gives a good look.



The rest of the work this Tuesday went towards designing and constructing the walls that will eventually be assembled together to form the front of the buildings in the winter world. Check out the post below this one if you haven't familiarized yourself with what these buildings are going to look like! It is taking about 12 of these sections to create the environment we are looking for. Each one of these measures 16 feet in height, and are going to turn into 2 story building facades.





Thanks a lot for checking this out, and we'll keep you posted throughout the week as we continue to build the set!

- Chris Amos '10: Director

Our Set

Posted below are some photos taken of a 3-D scale model that Aaron Menninga (Northwestern '09) has built.


The section on the right side here is a winter village that will be shot in the vein of Sweeney Todd. The buildings will be 16 feet high, and will run for about 50 feet long. The face of the brick buildng will be with sheets of ZBrick, a texture pattern similar to a thin wood (luan). The rest of it has been designed similar to the frame of a real house, with 2x4's and 1x4's, but the face will be luan, painted over to resemble a building from 19th century Europe. Here's an up close look at it:





And below here is the spring world, which will be constructed of patches of grass on top of luan, curving upwards, creating the forced perspective of a receding path to a small house on the skyline. The sky will be a large, 40 foot long backdrop, and the tree will be an actual tree full of leaves.





Finally, between these two worlds, there will be a simple and barren room, where the opening scene will occur, and the band will be performing in. In the finished set there will be peeling wallpaper going down the sides, and snow falling outside the window:



Oh, and the entire set is going to blow up...

- Chris Amos '10 - Director

WEBISODE 2: CASTING

We made a video about the casting we did over the weekend. Enjoy!





- Alex Leibowich '11

WEBISODE 1: THE CD RELEASE SHOW

Here's the first of many webisodes. This one's about the Butterfly Assassins' CD release show yesterday--enjoy!

Visit the Butterfly Assassins's Myspace to check out their new album, "Sylvia" at: www.myspace.com/butterflyassassins
-Rob Runyeon '10: Director