Stage Designs

Retro Spinners

Nate Rosso from Decibel Church in Beaufort, SC brings us these portable, retro-looking stage pieces. (originally posted April 2015)

Their church is relatively new—a little over 6 months old. They rent the auditorium and a few rooms at a local high school. Everything they do has to be mobile. The biggest challenge in set design they have is making it cheap, compact, and mobile. This stage design is for a month long series called “this is love” and Easter.

Over all, Nate spent $120 on this and it all packs down in 15 minutes into a box that is 32″x22″x15″.

Material list:
50 20″x30″ foam boards
Clear 20lb test fishing line
34′ 60lb black fishing leader
4 fishing leader crimps
4 black carabiners
28 split shot sinkers
14 fishing swivels with snap
2 cans metallic enamel spray paint
3 cans gray enamel spray paint
Hot glue gun, scissors, utility knife, tape measure, crimper, pliers
And a group of people that just wanna help.

In designing this, Nate wanted something that would grab light, as well as reflect and have free motion. He found dollar tree sells white 20″x30″ foam boards—easier to work with than Coroplast and cheaper. He started by taking 40 and cutting them in half, this gave him the 2 sizes. Next, he rounded all the corners with a scissors and then he measured out and used a utility knife to cut out the centers. After he completed one, he made that one his template for the rest of them.

He did the same thing for the larger ones.

After he cut all of them, he painted 14 of them metallic and 12 of them gray. He did this because he didn’t want the whole thing to be too bold white, this also made it look good without any uplight and as well with light in a manner that some reflected, some absorbed, and some illuminated. When assembled, the multi-color drops went white/metallic/white/gray/white and then staggered the next set.

Putting the drops together, he first punched 2 holes in the top/bottom centers of each square that the fishing line would run through. Nate strung the squares in the right pattern and then placed it on the floor. He then put a swivel at the top of each one, measured out 3.75″ between each, and then dabbed a little hot glue where the fishing line went through the square to hold them in place. The larger ones he made to be 7″ apart and made the middle square to be inner changeable to whatever symbol they have for the next series. (This series symbol was a hand with a heart on it, which he used a projector to make it on the foam board.)

Next, he cut black fishing leader to 17′ sections and put a carabiner on both sides to the right length and then used sinkers to crimp unto the leader to space the drops. At the front of the stage corners are I-beams. He used 2 beam clamps to hold the lines in place. Next, the drops were hung from the sinkered off spots.

Each side of the design was uplighted by 3 Chauvet Colorband Pixs and shot from the back by an intelligent light.

20150228_153251

20150316_172210

20150319_180156

20150319_193351

20150320_132351

20150320_150545

20150320_194637

20150321_195726

20150329_090317

20150329_103634

Hollow Crosses Nighttime Honeycomb

One response to “Retro Spinners”

  1. Cath says:

    Very Cool, especially considering we are also renting a school hall and needed something portable and easy to set up and down.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.