I designed this with a very specific country music duo in mind, but I won’t say who because it doesn’t matter. As is typical during the last two months of the year, I had a lot of downtime in which to ponder and build (in SketchUp) this set for a country music tour. I know I said a month ago that I was going to try and use Blender to model these from now on, but after some experimentation I think that Blender is probably a poor choice for the sorts of things I want to accomplish. For this set, I wanted to think more about how I’d use automation, if such were available, and ways in which I’d coax the maximum amount of looks out of a show. Behold, Generic Country Music Set no. 1:
The final configuration of the panels.
Staggered configuration.
Tilted configuration.
Starting configuration. The top two rows of panels are hidden behind a blackout drape upstage.
The Elidy panels turned around.
Another view of the Elidy panels.
I’d really like to use Elidy panels for this set, but not all Elidy, all the time. The basic conceit here is that the large panels in the back rotate along the Z axis to reveal or hide sections or all of the Elidy panels at any given time. The wooden “front” of the panels would be used as a giant projection surface to supplement the media going on on the main movable LED screens. Although not rendered in these pictures, I’d love to have two large movable sharkstooth scrims with front projection for doing some fun reveal / media interactivity gags with the performers, which – while a high-tech sort of effect, could be done correctly and wouldn’t adversely affect the “feel” of the concert, with the right media choices.
The fascia of the risers is intended to be some sort of metal grating with large-diameter holes behind which moving-head wash lights could be placed for some cool behind-the-grating looks, and with enough cleverness as far as placement, the grating could also be used as a projection surface to further pull the whole design together.