Progress

I've always been a builder and i always worked with my father as alittle boy and i've built up my technical and machanical skills. This year in senior research i really had no idea what i wanted to do but i knew i wanted to do something artistic and something that is a physical project. Then i was a sophomore a kid named Cory built the set for thoroughly modern millie and he did a great job. I desided that since I love theatre and building this would be a great way to give back.

I wanted to get my feet wet in the process of set building and designing so i worked with Hirschfelt on the fall play. We were doing a christmas charol. After my first meeting with gargus i was set oput to draw a blueprint of our stage which is a rough 25ft by 50ft. Quickly after this hirschfelt and I saw how much misalanious stuff was needed. One of the first rules to building anything is if you can use the wheel, why re-invent it? We ended up renting the majority of the peices but our main set was built by Hirschfelt and we quickly came to an agreement on a simple design.

my project was the time machine and I started with a very complicated design requiring many pullies to operate its wheels and clock. When building something it is easy to see how an idea will chanc=ge one put into reality. First I made a chassis using all independent rolling wheels, the shape was much like a wheel barro and the reasoning behind this was to make it possible for a human to push pull and drive this thing. My chassis was made out of 2x3s chosen because thats what i had to work with and 2x4s i deemed alittle bit of overkill for the project. I cross braced the sides to reenforce the cockpit and made a ladder frame, much like an original ford model T. Mrs. Gargus told me that this was set in old London, before cars. So i couldn't base my machine off a car like the delorean time machine from BTTF and i didn't want to make something like what we see in Dr. Who with the phone booth. This had to be original and accourding to the script steam powered. The way i enterpreted this was a steam locomotive, which is the main vehicle to be powered by steam so the design was heavily based off a train. Next for color. In this time period black 1 stage flat was the only color available redily and to me whould be the only color tio make sence on someones homemade time machine. In this time, brass fittings and bronze allows we used in pluming and i used this as my accent color. At first we thought we would use bycicle wheels all around on the time machine. After actually mocking up a real wheel I found that it would be hard to brace each one to my chassis. So I cut a piece of partical board using the wheels as a template and then finging center by messuring fromone end to another at 2 points on the wheel and the center of the x would be center. My friend Antonia painted the wheels for me and we desided that thwese would be double sided so that it could have 2 different looks for the show, we put these on the butterfly nuts so they were easily removed.

After I finished the man structure Gargus gave me a news flash. Turns out that the actor would have to be ontop of the time machine. Iinitially made the machine so that the driver would be inside. Luckily the chassis design was already strong enough without much alteration to handle the new task of a person standing on it. I also had to channel the whole body of the machine. To make our steam effect we desided on dry ice and hot water. The cool thing about this system is the boiling over of the CO2 and then the water runs down the barrel of the machine. My smoke stacks were made out of PVC pipe cut at a 45 degree angle. And a rubber plumbing stopper. I attached them with a bolt running through the bottom and an aluminum can lid as a washer inside and the whole thing was buried in silicone. Because now an actor had to ride on top of the machine no one could operate my time dial or drive the machine so I put a 2x8 on the inside as a seat for a small passenger to ride in and operate the clock. I also needed a driver and even with all this extra weight it was still relatively easy to steer.

Because I’m a hot rodder myself I thought the grill would be a nice touch. This was going to be an actual charcoal grill face but I had a great friend Craig Gallo who is my go to guy for graphics that I had help me make a grill, which I had cut out on the lazer engraver. I was limited by the size of the machine.

Now about the clock. The pully system would be way to complicated and I showed the idea to my Dad. After some brain storming we thought that we could use a bike to accomplish this. So Since this will no longer be subject to a rider or the abuses of riding we started cutting up the diamond frame. I kept one arm on the rear hub because it was more than adequate for the torque demands it would have to withstand. One more modification was cutting off one side of the peddle assembly and moving it into the body of the machine so the axle could be operated from the inside of the craft. Lastly, I put on the rear hub from a kiddy bike. I’m sure everyone has had some experience with this style rear hub. When you peddle backwards it stops. This allows the what would be clock to speed up and come to abrupt stops which is the way time travel has always been depicted as. To add just one more special touch. I attached 2 zip ties to the frame of the bike with the excess protruding into the spokes of the bike, giving a ticking sound when spun. I spent at least 300 hours just building this one vehicle. When all was said and done the whole thing was square within .25 of an inch.

After accomplishing making this prop I desided I could haddle doing it for my senior research and I could handle being in the musical as an actor aswell.

This show was anything goes

Hirschfelt and I were use to working together and we were actually looking at designs for a set way before we even started. We came up with several ideas and pretty soon had a great set. Now in Musical there is one other guy who everyone knows as the set builder and he was my unofficial mentor, Mr. Pinto. Luckily for me, we only had 2 weeks to build the set and this put stress on the build team and allowed it to be extended to enclude Hirschfelt aswell. Since we had such a short time to build I thought why not make it like a set house? I’ve seen tons of episodes of home enprovement shows where the strike up a building in a week. And the key is collapsible panels. The whole boat was designed in 5 main pieces.

In the show anything goes the set is always more than one story. On Broadway the set was 3 stories but the theatre was also 3 stories tall. We desided on a single story set. L

Last year Pinto deisgned the beauty and the beast set to be 7 ft off the ground and believe it or not after he finished he had to cut it down. Which is no easy task.

This set was designed with 6ft 9in legs and we all agreed that one it was up it wouldn’t be taken down.