Monday, October 03, 2011
George Tsypin and PRG on Spider-Man’s Sets
Live Design: PRG’s latest video installment on the technology behind Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, this time focusing on the sets and staging.
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4 comments:
I can not imagine the level of revisions to the budget within PRG that happened on this show. Working in the upper echelon of live productions is truly awe inspiring in the ability to overcome and adapt. I am impressed at also the length of linear time that they had to troubleshoot and theorize is truly a gift. I am still unsure if this show will be profitable the way the producers want but if it is the shops at PRG are going to get back what public relations good will they spent when the show was not running smoothly. With that Chrysler Building Unit I am sure that the amount of physics equations were staggering.
So, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark has gotten a lot of bad press as we all know. Mostly because of the bad music, weak plot, director firing and ultimately, performer injuries. Recently on this blog we have been seeing a lot of articles about the design of this show and it is making me start to rethink my feelings about it. Last semester I had the opportunity to tour the Broadway tour of Phantom of the Opera. During the tour the TD said that this show was so monstrous back in 1986 when it was put up that the likes of it will not be scene in our time. The economy will just not support it. We have seen the trend of broad way shows getting smaller. In the midst of this, along comes Spider-Man. By design of ego and poor planning we have the most expensive show in Broadway history. Because of that, the production team has brought us things that we have never seen before. I budget that enable huge flying scenery and aerial sequences. Watching this video from RPG it is clear that this show pushed the boundary of shows like has not been seen since that chandelier crashed into the stage at the end of act 1 of phantom.
The design aspects behind Spider Man are absolutely astounding. The mass of scenery and the ways in which is needs to move to create the multidimensional and multi-perspective set that the audience must experience from one seat is amazing. I can't imagine what PRG must have thought when they were first approached with the show. Getting a piece as large as the Chrysler Building to rotate, fold, track, and collapse that way it does must have had a very long, and very intense design period. While I absolute appreciate the complexity of the spectacle, I do wonder if the show actually fits together well. Does the music fit with the scenery? Do the costumes fit in the same world as the lighting? It seem that the production team spent so much time on the technical aspects of the show that it makes one wonder if the performers can live up to the environment in which they are placed every night. I would have to see the show to be able to tell if everything goes together well, or if the spectacle overshadows everything else in the show. Even if it does, I still want to see the show just to see the impressive scenic and lighting designs in person.
I don't have the best opinion of some aspects of this show - the music, the plot, etc - but there is one thing that I am totally sold on: the set design. What I think makes this show really innovative is the extensive use of warped perspective. How the planar scenery is skewed give you a misplaced concept of where you are oriented to this object. The bridge and the multitude of skyscrapers are great examples of that. The best example, of course, is the Chrysler Building paired with the sloped floor. It gives the audience a bird's eye view of the scene, which is unheard of! The actors must also adjust their movements in consideration that "up" is no longer up but actually out. Gravity (and our perception of it) is manipulated to the utmost degree.
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