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| Patrick spraying the carpet brown. |
Its been a while since I made a set to tour around the M50 theatres and things have got a lot fussier fire-proofing wise. I don’t remember having to use officially stamped wood, or having to provide fire certs for everything before. (For events in Dublin Castle, yes.)
The following will probably sound as though the build consisted of lurching from one crisis to another, but it wasn’t. The things we remember about a set production are the difficulties- the things just went exactly to plan don’t stick in the mind quite so readily. However there were some things that really didn’t go to plan:
I wanted to use lino with a square tile pattern for the flooring outside of the house, but even with very helpful discounts, we couldn’t afford it from the budget, so reflecting that lino was expensive, but labour was cheap (seeing as everyone is on a fixed fee), I decided to use 2nd hand event carpeting, and draw the lino squares on with a thick marker. I checked beforehand that the carpet was flame retardant, and was told it was ( obviously- it is used for events). It was also 5 times cheaper. Unfortunately, the colour I needed wasn’t available in the second hand stock, so I bought an orange carpet and decided to spray it brown with supersaturated paint.
The paint didn’t go far enough, so we mixed up old paints from under the sink and managed to get enough to paint the carpet, but it turned out that the sprayer had to be used indoors, because the slightest breeze would dissipate the spray. This meant a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with sodden rolls of carpet, and constant mopping of the Focus stage. Once all the rolls were dry, they had to be marked out and the squares drawn, a mind-numbing process- literally-, because the person who did the job went into a zombie state and didn’t notice that the lines had wavered off by up to 10cm. And indelible markers- they’re, well , indelible.
So for next time- if the carpet isn’t available in the right colour, and you can’t afford the alternative- make an alternative design. In the end, your time is not infinitely available.
