Rosco Spectrum: The Ford Rouge Factory Tour, part of The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, was recently upgraded to showcase Ford’s rich history as well as offer a glimpse into the innovative future of the Ford F-150. The facility’s key attraction, the Manufacturing Innovation Theater, created, developed and produced by BRC Imagination Arts, was re-imagined from the ground up using state-of-the-art technology –including Rosco’s Intelligent Fog System – to create a multisensory exploration of the entire Ford F-150 manufacturing process.
9 comments:
I love highly technical piece like this that are, at face value, without a real message or meaning behind them (except "buy a ford", yet somehow containing an immense amount of theatrical presence. I think tech like this is just really impressive and fun to work with and watch. I would like to see more applications for this heavily tech based style of performance to be incapsulated within a story. So often, shows just have tech thrown at them for no other reason other than they can with little regards to whether or not they should or need them. I look forward to a time when theatre shows are capable of incorporating heavily laser and projection mapping aspects into them seamlessly, but we must be careful less we fall into the Jurassic Park trap: 'They were so concerned with whether or not they could, they stopped to ask if they should.'
The design in this is so cool. I would consider this work installation art. This article and videos sort of reiterated the fact what as a design er you can take your skills way out of the entertainment world that we think of every day, which is theater an television. As a designer and as a manager you can take those skills and work for car companies like Ford. I have never looked around and noticed how much of the things around me are designed and thought about the designers that went into those things. But, this article was a great example about how far you can go as a designer. You can take the skills that you learn here and apply them to a lot of different things. I think it would be really cool to design the lights for the Super bowl of the scenery for a music video. Those are things that I don’t think about when thinking of possible design opportunities but they totally are.
Oh lord,don't let the lighting designers see this article! haha as if we didn't have enough fog/ haze in our shows to begin with, now we can use intelligent haze? I am surprised that out of all the industries, the car show casing industry is the forerunner on intelligent haze. Gotta add a little flair and excitement in order to trick your customers into buying the the same car year after year, right? I do like that article goes over the reasoning behind why a hazer was chosen: "The BRC team needed fog & haze effects that would also disappear quickly in order to keep their projections visible as the show continued. This meant they needed a fluid that would dissipate swiftly in order not to interfere with consecutive scenes. After experimenting with different fog fluids, the quick-dissipating Rosco Stage & Studio Fog Fluid proved to be the right choice for this project."
Wow these effects are really cool and I think they really enhance the presentation of the cars. I like how they are using newer technology to show the progression of technology throughout Ford’s life. Car presentations are getting cooler and cooler as time goes on, which is helping them keep an interested audience. If you watch a lot of car presentations that are boring and just show the car, then after awhile the audience will get sick of it and not be as interested in buying the car. If the companies show them with really cool effects and lighting then it makes the cars look even more interesting and it intrigues the audience to buy the newest cars. I find it interesting that they made sure to get top-notch fog that had the ability to quickly dissipate so it would not get in the way of the rest of their presentation.
I probably haven’t been to the Henry Ford Museum in about 15 years (I grew up about 20 minutes away). This new attraction might mean a trip back. I’m not exactly a fan of atmospherics like fog and haze. Some designers I’ve worked with wanted to use it because we had it or because it was cool. I agree – it can be cool, but if it doesn’t help tell the story, then why use it? It looks like this implementation does both. It is cool and helps tell the story of the F-150. This is also a big change for the Henry Ford Museum. That place is typically about history, not innovation and not show. I don’t know much about this particular system, but the fact that they have one central location for the fog fluid sounds great to me. Only having to check or refill one machine is great.
I would not have thought about the fact that there are different types of fog for fog machines. However, I don’t quite understand what this was all made for. Where did this showcase take place, and why was it showcasing the production and manufacturing of the F-150? In this particular case I don’t see the point of adding in fog and haze. I watched the video that shows the car disappearing and the haze doesn’t really add to the effect very much because the lights are out for most of the time that the car is sinking into the floor. I think that the lighting and media designs that are shown add much more to the piece than the haze does. Reading these articles shows me how much there is that I don’t know about the logistics and minutia of theatrical instruments. Hopefully I’ll learn more as my time reading and writing about these articles continues.
It is interesting to see the variety of Atmospheric Effects that permeate theatre now moving more into industrials. As Broadway shows move to include even greater amounts of CO2 and N2 effects, the market for producing these effect generators has expanded more into the Mainstream. Where previously productions might have incorporated fog or haze, modern theatrical productions often include Smoke, Mist, Haze, Fog, Low Lying Fog, Cryojets, and Bubbles, in addition to Pyrotechnics. On the largest of productions, there may even be specific technicians and a control system just for these atmospherics. Entire companies such as MDG, Le Maitre, Base Haze, and others work almost exclusively in atmospherics. Haze and fog can truly make a performance, and as a the theatrical lighting expands to include concert lighting and other genres of lighting, atmospherics can play even heightened roles. In concert lighting, often entire systems of lighting are dedicated to creating beamage. As such, the use of haze and its dispersion throughout the performance space become crucial to achieving the designer's vision.
Never have I seen a car show before with this many creative and design elements. While at first it seems a little ridiculous to showcase Ford models with extremely dramatic lighting and haze effects, the images show a surprisingly beautiful and aesthetic presentation that is unique to any car show I've ever seen. Not only does it present the cars, but it give a multi-sensory experience that shows the building and manufacturing process to the audience. I wonder how his technology and design could potentially be applied to other products aside from cars, and if this could become a common spectacle people would pay money to see. I think it's interesting how in this particular show car models are presented with the same theatricality as runway models walking with the latest fashion. Yet, because the truck model was supposedly so innovative that it would change the industry, the creators needed a show that would match.
I don’t really know much about fog and haze besides all of the mishaps and slip ups we experienced with “special effects” in highschool, but this looks very interesting. Museums can be considered very boring to some people, but I never really thought there was a way to change that. You either like them or you don’t, and that was that. But, introducing atmospheric elements in to a museum (especially a historic car museum…) is a great idea. I think changing the atmosphere is a great way to bring the museum-goers into the history and period of the Ford museum. Now, this being said, after looking at the design I do think the fog and haze is a little much at some points. Maybe the museum could consider other elements to help bring the atmospheric elements together instead of blasting fog or haze. But I do hope to see other museums use technology and effects like this to bring their exhibits together.
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