Rosco Spectrum: For some people – Halloween is the most important holiday of the year. It’s the time of year to pull out all the stops and celebrate the haunted and the macabre. Such is the case for one residence in Washington D.C. who opened up their home to host what they’re calling the “Chesterfield Circus.” As guests enter this haunted home-attraction, they walk through an archway of foam skulls that is coated/protected by a variety of Rosco Scenic Products.
9 comments:
These are all really smart ideas. I especially love how the artists used foam for most of the piece. The painted foam truly gives the effect of the rock walls you'd find in a catacomb. The foam also makes it easy to imbed the sculls in to it, making it look like they are actual remains layered in the catacomb. Another benefit to using foam is that the structure is light and easy to carry. The designers mentioned that they wished to transport the decorations to different places in a white van, so since foam is light, the piece will be easy to both transport and store. That is the goal of this design, after all. Also, the way the skulls and rock are painted to show shadows is stunning. That is a detail that is easy to forget, and because the designers paid great attention to including detailed shadows, the piece has a spooky effect.
I'm really liking this attention paid to really creepy, effective halloween decorations that you can make yourself and also have it last. It's a great activity to do with a family and it can prove that you are in fact the scariest and most committed house on the block. When throwing parties or similar types of events, my roommates and I really pay attention to what type of decorations we're going to throw away and what decorations will make a comeback at the next party. We threw down a whole lot of money to buy a bunch of hue bulbs because we knew they would continue to be a staple of our house, but when it comes to things like mylar curtains similar types of things, we either air on the cheaper side, or we can find it from the trash. We took this logic into our halloween party, our roommate wanted a big backdrop of blood so instead of paying a lot of money, we just found cheap plastic in our alley and covered it in homemade blood. We threw it out the next day.
Rosco makes some really great scenic painting and decorating products. Just being exposed to some of their paint products in our stagecraft painting mini, I could really tell just how nice their paints are. There is really great saturation in their colors that allows you to mix virtually any other color you want. This article has some really great ideas on how to use their FlexCoat product with foam. Based on the pictures, I think it created a really nice look for this halloween experience. I also really love their use of foam because you can carve it any way you would like and it makes for a number of really cool visual effects. I really like what these products, together, can do. This article can teach people a lot about certain foam techniques and how to effectively use the medium to create really special and attractive visual effects. This is a very helpful article.
I used to be afraid of Halloween but now that I have grown up, I look forward to the holiday and its traditions much more. Being in the school of drama and learning how to create sets and props for theater, this article is just another learning experience feeding my brain. It is very cool to see how creative people can get when it comes to self made projects. In this project, creating a catacomb entryway out of different types of foam and clay is brilliant. I love the detail they were able to get making the skulls. Also, the different rock texture and wall texture is so distinct and adds depth and a awesome scenic layer to the whole project. Reading this article, I was unaware that Rosco sold products meant for scenic designers and Senic construction. Previously, I only thought of them as a lighting company. It is great to see that all this can come out of creativity and willing ness to create something awesome.
-Pablo Anton
I love reading articles like this about scenic painting and foam carving endeavors. No surprise that this artist decided to a bunch of tests to pick the appropriate consistency for this project. It is also crazy to think that the artist only had a week to put this project together. Trying to make something that looks the way it wants to or needs to, plus making it to last not only for the conditions it may come up against but also for a long period of time, and to do so all in a week can be quite the challenge. Bravo to Scott. It definitely helps that he was familiar with the product options he had, and just had to play around with a few mixing variations, especially since he was applying these materials to foam and plastic, which can be finicky materials when thinking about how they take on paints. This article is all about the paint treatment, but I would be curious about how Scott supported this catacomb structure and got the foam and such to stay mounted.
I think that sometimes, in theatre, we are taught to make something hold up, but only for a certain amount of time. In terms of props (and sometimes costumes), there is often a place for an item in stock to be kept for when it is next needed. In scenery, however, sets get broken down and repurposed into new sets and other objects all the time. Nothing is permanent. I really like that this is something that could be made at home - DIY’d, if you will - by a regular person. You don’t just have to be an artist, just someone with a minorly creative mind (or a nice stone wall to stare at). The fact that they used foam is awesome - it is light weight, easy to carve, and can be used to make some wonderful, realistic texture. The skulls and other aspects that are sticking out of the wall are also easily attached to the foam because you can just ram them in with a rod (or something).
I found this article very interesting, especially since I am currently in paints class in stagecraft. It is really great to read about how much goes into making a major scenic element such as this skull archway. There were many constraints involved as well such as transporting the entryway, public interaction, weather proofing, storage and reuse. They used a variety of clays and Rosco scenic products which are similar to what our paint shop uses to make 3D pieces. Hey also had to figure out the ratio of each of these products. The scenic artists used Kaolin clay, FlexCoat, exterior latex paint, and Rosco premier clear to create this skull entryway. The entryway has a wonderful sense of depth and age to it. The scenery was able to survive the trip and will be returning to Chesterfield Circus in 2020. It’s so incredible what scenic artists can make with the right tools.
This article highlights for me the balance between art, witchcraft, and chemistry that I perceive scenic art as being. It gets into detail the process of coating the surfaces to protect them, and the way in which they mixed the products they were already using with other products to protect the surfaces, but it glosses over the initial carving part. I was also curious about the fact that the people who made the skull archway did not appear to be experienced in exhibits or other types of traveling scenery until I scrolled back up and realized that the piece was commissioned by owners of a private residence. Now, I am wondering about the budget for the piece and where it will be stored. The wide variety of Rosco products used for the entryway are not inexpensive, and the services of a scenic artist are certainly less so. I certainly hope the owners are charging admission, but I sincerely doubt it. I suspect the people who commissioned the work are merely die-hard halloween fans.
I am always all for how to use theatrical tips and techniques in the "real world," and I really appreciated how detailed everything was in this article. I am also always especially interested when theatrical scenic techniques specifically are used outside of a performance context, because it often shows us how short a period of time, in most cases, our scenery is built to last, and how it could be made more robust and reused if we used different techniques and materials. I know there has been so much discussion about ways to reuse theatre, and while I think this article is a very niche and specific aspect of scenic artistry, I do think it might be worth adding to the conversation about how to make our theatrical scenery last longer, be able to be reused, and help contribute to the effort of reducing the amount of overall waste we put out into the world.
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