# I've got a good one for you...



## Shakspeares suck (Jul 11, 2008)

My High School did a production of Peter Pan for the Spring musical this year. we bought set plans from a professional company that were HUGE! it consisted of 10 wagons, and each one was big, the smallest was around 6ft wide and 10ft long while the largest was around 15ft long and 10ft wide. we didnt have enough wing space so we put set pieces outside through our garage. heres where it gets interesting, we built the entire set on the stage wagon by wagon. when we finished the large piece of the pirate ship we had to roll it through our stage door which is exactly 10 ft. wide, and the plans called for the pirate ship to be 10ft wide, and ours was maybe 10ft and 1/8 in. it didnt fit! so we took the brush things that were on the doors to prevent scratching and it barely fit! turns out we had to cut off 6in of the **** thing anyway! pissing me off!!!

BATEMAN


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## Footer (Jul 11, 2008)

Yale Rep famously has a single double door to get onstage, that is at the end of a small hallway, and they manage to get some huge stuff onstage. Always know how you are going to get something to somewhere else. There is a reason I have 9'2x100 written on the wall in my shop (the size of a semi trailer).


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## Shakspeares suck (Jul 11, 2008)

haha proly what we should have done, but my TD is aan idiot and forgot to double check to make sure it would fit


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## Spikesgirl (Jul 15, 2008)

We had a guest designer come into our theater and design/build "Gypsy". silly designer should have actually measured our shop doors and not assume they were all the same size. he ended up have to cut 6" off the top of two wagons before our shop door and the theater door were not at the same heights. He was really pompous, so all of us poor working slobs neglected to mention the oversight to him previously. Afterwards, I pointed the measurements posted on the side of the door to him. He was not my biggest fan after that.


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## Grog12 (Jul 15, 2008)

Spikesgirl said:


> We had a guest designer come into our theater and design/build "Gypsy". silly designer should have actually measured our shop doors and not assume they were all the same size. he ended up have to cut 6" off the top of two wagons before our shop door and the theater door were not at the same heights. He was really pompous, so all of us poor working slobs neglected to mention the oversight to him previously. Afterwards, I pointed the measurements posted on the side of the door to him. He was not my biggest fan after that.



Welcome back...I've missed you....

shouldn't your td have noticed that?


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## Spikesgirl (Jul 16, 2008)

Thanks, Grog, I've been around, but insanely busy. Then I got sick, burning the candle and all that. Then I had to play catch up on all the things i couldn't do while I was sick and had a relapse - stupid summer colds! However, FM is done and all I have on my plate until the end of the year is set design and props for BIG BANG and SMing "DEARLY DEPARTED - yea, breathing space again! 

Good to be back!


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## mbenonis (Jul 17, 2008)

We're really lucky to have very very large doors to our shop - I think they're something like 20x20. I don't think I've ever seen something that couldn't fit through them...


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## Van (Jul 17, 2008)

Ask Gafftaper, he's seen my shop. I literally have a handball court that I build in and a 10' tall by exactly 8' wide double door to get onto my main stage. Second stage has 35 " wide man doors only. It's all about prep my freind, all about prep.


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## gafftaper (Jul 18, 2008)

Van said:


> Ask Gafftaper, he's seen my shop. I literally have a handball court that I build in and a 10' tall by exactly 8' wide double door to get onto my main stage. Second stage has 35 " wide man doors only. It's all about prep my freind, all about prep.



Plus you have a lovely parking garage you're gradually annexing as well!


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## museav (Jul 18, 2008)

Worked on a High School performing arts building where the county "Value Engineered" the final design including applying many county design standards to it. Ended up with a 20'+ high Prop Storage room with 7' high doors, a roll-up loading dock door that only fit 4x8 sheets on their side and Music Practice Rooms with doors too narrow to fit some of the instruments.


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## derekleffew (Jul 18, 2008)

Shakspeares suck said:


> ...we had to roll it through our stage door which is exactly 10 ft. wide, and the plans called for the pirate ship to be 10ft wide, and ours was maybe 10ft and 1/8 in. it didnt fit! so we took the brush things that were on the doors to prevent scratching and it barely fit! turns out we had to cut off 6in of the **** thing anyway!...


Why is it that often when this sort of thing happens, the architect of the building gets blamed?


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## Shakspeares suck (Aug 16, 2008)

haha well i would just blame my TD bc hes kind of an idiot because he never checked


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## cdub260 (Aug 17, 2008)

For this year's Pageant of the Masters, we have a reproduction of a fountain that consists of 8 set pieces, 1 flown, 7 on wagons. The largest of these pieces was designed to just barely fit through the loading door of the stage. The roll-up doors on our shop building are exactly the same size as the the loading door to the stage building. Well the set fit just fine through the shop doors, so you would think it would fit through the stage door as well. It didn't. There is a retaining wall just outside the loading door to the stage and all scenery has to make a turn to get in the door. Our Set Designer/TD/LD forgot to take this into account when he designed this set piece. The fix was to cut 18 inches off of one corner of the wagon and replace it with a fold down flap so there wouldn't be a huge, triangle shaped hole in the middle of the set when the other six wagons were joined with the main wagon. Let me tell you, its fun getting that piece into the building every night at intermission. It clears by 1/2".


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## zmb (Mar 27, 2010)

How about a set of standard-sized double doors on SL in a theatre that has it's own building (and lacks a shop, makeup, lobby, etc.) that is conveintly located in the middle of a junior high campus and the storage area has a narrow ramp with switch backs in it.


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## DuckJordan (Mar 28, 2010)

i tend not to blame the architect for this sort of thing, because i bet if you go and ask him about his drawing what that room was for he would say he has no idea they gave him dimensions and that's it. Whats really funny, is our architect knew we had a theater, specifically wanted to put in double roll doors in our space. The district said no, its an auditorium not an auto shop, when he tried explaining it to them they said if he puts the double garage doors in there they will find a new architect.

So most of the time its the "educated" people ( i use educated very loosely) that make the poor decisions.


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## len (Mar 28, 2010)

Design begins at the end. How do you get it there? How do you get it out? What do you do with it when it's not in use? One of those unintended lessons I learned helping my dad build a new dining room table in the basement. Or when the school built a new music wing, with a special percussion storage room. The door was too narrow to fit the tympani.


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## chris325 (Mar 28, 2010)

DuckJordan said:


> So most of the time its the "educated" people ( i use educated very loosely) that make the poor decisions.



Kind of like how only two of our four catwalks actually have dimmer connections, there is just a bunch of cable linking to the other two. That, along with a bunch of space under the stage behind the pit that could have been used for storage, etc. And the set shop is surprisingly small...


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## shiben (Mar 29, 2010)

I think the best is in our new Fine Arts Center the loading dock used to be up about 6' from the stage, so everything was rolled down a ramp, that had a narrow door in it. Getting carts of speakers through there was near impossible, and keeping them from sliding down was a 4 man operation. Currently, all we have to contend with is our dock being about 12-16 feet above the shop floor, and having a forklift to get everything down and in. and thats what we get for being in the basement.


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## Tex (Apr 4, 2010)

I have a 14' x 8' door between the shop and the stage, which is nice. The problem is, my shop is a small right triangle with about 40% being unusable. I don't have enough space to build something too large to fit through the door! 
I think we can safely blame this one on the architect...


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