Christmas Designs

Make Believe

Patrick Fore from The Woodlands UMC’s Loft Church campus in The Woodlands, TX brings us this dream-like bedroom. (originally posted December 2012)

They built this set for a series called, “Make Believe” which pivoted around a story of a boy who, after hearing his grandfather reading him the Christmas story, falls asleep and dreams of meeting various characters in the story. (Angel, Shepherd, Herald, Inn Keeper, Baby Jesus and the Manger Scene). In the set, Patrick had to build an inn for the innkeeper, a castle for Herod, and a window the angle could climb threw. Each character was introduced every week culminating on Christmas Eve where the young boy meets Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.

Because this was not reality and a dream this boy was having, Patrick had tremendous liberty when it came to design. He wanted to distort reality all while keeping some visual cues that it could be a boy’s bedroom. From the beginning he drew on Dr. Seuss as inspiration. His use of bright colors, gradients, oddly shaped structures all played into the over all aesthetic.

Patrick wanted to create something that was in the frame-work of what a child could imagine and even use to produce this environment. Everything was meant to be kiddy in its finishing.

From the beginning they knew this set was to be very theatrical – atypical of what they normally do. It was build around the drama however it had to work for worship. The drums were placed on top of the platform and the bass player played standing on the bed.

Construction

Everything was constructed from scratch. The platform was built out of 2x4s, all the flats were hollywood-style built with 1x4s and hardboard.

The bed was a simple trapizodial platform that was elevated at the head. The head and footboard were purposefully made at different sizes to force perspective giving the appearance that the bed was larger than it really was.  They were made from 1x4s glued and stapled together then cut using a jig into the radius.

The rocket was made from a construction tube, card board for the fins, and lighting gels for the flames and windows.  The tip was made from an old piece of thin clear acrylic (like a cheap poster frame comes with) cut and molded into a cone shape  and glued together with hot-glue then spray painted red.

The moon was simply 3-sheets of 1/2 insulation foam taped together on both sides and cut into a moon shape. Later, it was painted with  black and black-light blue paint (WildFire Paints).

For lighting they used their cyc screen (sky-drop) and used LED Color Blazes at the bottom to uplight.

Completion Time: 6 days

Set/Art Design/Builder – Patrick Fore
Painting/Texturing – David Hemmeline

Intersection Christmas in String

3 responses to “Make Believe”

  1. Paul Snyder says:

    Patrick Fore is a set designing genius!

  2. Brilliant! When you are done with that set it could be put into a Children’s Ministries environment. Great job!

  3. Always looking for unique ways of presenting the Christmas and Easter stories in fresh modern ways…any plans of sharing the script or production information about “make believe”?

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