My first job for In Extremis is to work out the exact dimensions for the floor plan ready for Richard McCabe who's coming in tomorrow. Richard McCabe is a Set Builder who I will be working with to produce technical drawings to be built from.
What John Camble and Rhiannon Price wanted me to work out was the best positioning for the textured floor cloth, and also the planks of wood downstage center. For the wood at the front of the stage we spoke about me taking a 4' x 8' peice of timber and working out how we would cut it up for the optiomum amount of planks, all at three metres long to stagger against each other downstage.
First of all I measured the floorcloth on the model box, which measured 7387mm, so I increased the measurement to make it easier to work with to 7400mm. (I had previously asked the designer if it was ok to adjust the measurements). The length of the floorcloth is 5300. I centered it up in accordance to the center lines on my floor plan.
For the planks I wants to work out how many peices of 4'x8' we'd need so I calculated the optimum width to get as many peices as possible out of the wood leaving as little to waste as possible. I chose 200mm as we can get 6 lengths at 2440mm to work with.
The total wastage is 20mm x 2440mm.
I then lay all the planks top to bottom to work out where the joins would be to make each section up to 3000mm.
The next calculation was how many planks of wood I would need to get the full width of the acting space at 5400mm, and the answer was 27. I realised my method for calculating the lengths was taking too long and would be difficult to then transfer into the drawing without re-drawing every plank. I created a different method that was much quicker using maths, you can see on the drawing the processes I used.
The next calculation was how many planks of wood I would need to get the full width of the acting space at 5400mm, and the answer was 27. I realised my method for calculating the lengths was taking too long and would be difficult to then transfer into the drawing without re-drawing every plank. I created a different method that was much quicker using maths, you can see on the drawing the processes I used.
Whilst I was working on this, I has news from the designer that because she wasn't aware of the health and safety regulations of the Studio Theatre, the whole set had to be shifted back to make enough room to access the fire escapes and for the audience.
The first thing I then did was mark out the seating area, which is 5 rows at 1000mm and clearance of 750mm between the audience and the start of the acting area. The designer suggested moving the floor cloth as far back as it would go because the doors on the back wall wouldn't be used for access and no one needed to pass behind the structure.
I ran out of time to complete this any further, but hopefully I can just explain to Richard that I'm new to this and I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I will be able to make a more concise ground plan after our meeting with him.
I ran out of time to complete this any further, but hopefully I can just explain to Richard that I'm new to this and I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I will be able to make a more concise ground plan after our meeting with him.
Health and Safety regulations must be considered in designs and when I'm drawing up construction drawings, I learned that this is very important. Having to use my maths skills quite a lot has been a change, but a welcome change!
