Stagecraft Chp 8 Building Scenery

Summary

In Chapter 8 of the stagecraft series, the discussion delves into the intricacies of scenery construction in theater, as explained by KBlakeley. The chapter explores various elements you might find on stage, starting with the purpose and types of drapes used in a theater setting. It covers the importance of masking to enhance the theatrical experience by keeping backstage activities hidden from the audience. The chapter further explains different techniques and materials used in creating flats and platforms, such as traditional and Hollywood-style flats, Triscuits, and stress skin platforms. Additionally, the conversation touches upon the construction and assembly of stairs, explaining the different parts of stairs and their specific applications in theater. This chapter serves as a foundational guide for anyone interested in understanding the technicalities involved in building scenery for theatrical productions.

Highlights

• Black drapes are used in theaters to cut down on light and focus attention where desired. 🖤
• Legs and borders create frames and portals on stage for better sight lines and entrance/exits. 🎭
• Fullness in drapes helps in sound absorption and cuts down light intrusion. 📣
• Flats are crucial components of theater scenery, often soft-covered and reusable, offering versatility. 🖌️
• The term 'Hollywood flat' originates from the film industry, borrowed by theaters for its stability. 🎬
• Platforms, including stress skin platforms like Triscuits, are essential for robust and adaptable stage setups. 🏗️
• Gating or stud walls are used as supportive structures under platforms, resembling stud walls in houses. 🏠
• Stairs vary in design between open and closed carriage, with different treads and risers tailored for performance needs. 🚶

Key Takeaways

• Theater drapes are essential in shaping audience focus and controlling light, often masked with black to avoid backstage distractions. 🎭
• Different types of flats, such as traditional soft flats and Hollywood hard flats, offer diverse options for scene construction. 🛠️
• Platforms with varying construction styles, including Triscuits, provide versatile staging solutions. 🎨
• Stairs in theater production can be open or closed carriage, designed for both safety and aesthetic appeal. 🚶
• Understanding the structural foundation of scenery, including materials and techniques, is crucial for effective stage management. 🎬

Overview

Chapter 8 delves into the foundational elements of scene construction, introducing the vast array of drapes utilized in a theater setting to direct audience focus and minimize light interference. Using anecdotes and practical insights, the chapter highlights the importance of masking to preserve the theatrical magic, detailing how elements like legs and borders frame the stage and prevent distractions.

The discussion extends into the realm of flats, elucidating on both traditional and modern approaches. From soft-covered traditional flats to the more robust Hollywood-style hard flats, the dialogue reveals the practical considerations behind each and how they contribute to the visual and structural integrity of stage settings. With a focus on versatility, these components are depicted as both essential and transformative.

Platforms and stairs emerge as crucial entities within theatrical design, with examples showcasing different construction techniques and applications. Triscuits are spotlighted for their adaptability in building durable yet dynamic stage pieces. The text introduces architectural concepts like gating for support and explores stair construction for the seamless movement of performers, tailoring designs to suit diverse theatrical needs.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Scene Construction The chapter titled 'Introduction to Scene Construction' discusses various aspects of scene construction as labeled by a textbook. However, instead of providing detailed steps for building a scene, the chapter focuses more on describing the different parts typically found on a stage. The discussion begins with an emphasis on fabric, specifically in the context of its role in scene construction.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Drapes and Their Importance In this chapter titled 'Drapes and Their Importance', the transcript discusses the variety of drapes available in a theater, specifically focusing on black drapes. These black drapes are used to manage light within the theater environment and help focus the audience's attention or direct their gaze to specific areas during a performance. The chapter highlights the functional role that drapes play in theatrical settings.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Legs and Masking Techniques The chapter 'Legs and Masking Techniques' discusses stage design focusing on the arrangement of 'legs'—curtains or drapes positioned on the sides of the theater. These are set horizontally across the stage, extending from stage left to stage right. The strategic arrangement of these legs involves placing one set in a particular location and another set upstage from the first, thereby creating an alleyway or portal effect on the stage. This technique helps in masking different parts of the stage, thus contributing to efficient stage management.
• 04:30 - 07:00: Borders, Sightlines, and Portals The chapter elaborates on the importance of 'legs' and 'masking' in stage setup which aids in both framing the stage and managing sight lines. It emphasizes how scenery is brought onto the stage and actors' entrances and exits are facilitated. The chapter also discusses the significance of ensuring audience members have unobstructed views, highlighting the careful planning needed for effective sight lines.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Differentiating Drapes: Fullness and Flatness This chapter discusses the importance of maintaining the theatrical experience by keeping the backstage actions hidden from the audience. It highlights how distractions, like seeing someone peering out from behind the wings, can break the magic of the performance and cause the audience to lose focus on the main action.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Cyclorama and Cut Drops This chapter explores the use of cycloramas and cut drops in theater productions, focusing on how they enhance theatrical magic and maintain audience engagement. It explains the function of legs (fabric pieces) on stage to mask elements outside the main action, ensuring the audience's attention remains directed where intended. The proscenium is highlighted as it acts as a leg in these applications. The narration emphasizes the technical aspects of stagecraft that support the visual and aesthetic experience of a performance.
• 15:00 - 19:00: Use of Flats in Theater This chapter focuses on the use of flats in box theaters where space is limited. The discussion includes how more legs are hung underneath the balcony to reduce sight lines and make entrances and exits smaller. Additionally, it describes the extension of drapes from the grid to the floor and beneath to accommodate the constrained space.
• 19:00 - 27:00: Platforms and Stress Skin Platforms The chapter discusses drapery, specifically focusing on 'fullness' compared to 'flat' drapes. It explores the concept through examples, indicating that fullness in drapes involves additional fabric that creates a richer, more voluminous appearance. This can be enhanced by doubling back the fabric. The conversation helps to illustrate the aesthetic and functional differences between various drapery styles and how fullness contributes to the overall design.
• 27:00 - 34:00: Gating System and Triscuits The chapter discusses the construction and function of a drape system, specifically focusing on the gathering of fabric to enhance sound absorption and light blocking. By taking extra fabric and sewing it into folds, the drape becomes more effective at absorbing sound because the multiple layers and folds catch sound waves, dampening noise effectively. This method is used to make drapes, known as 'legs,' more efficient at controlling acoustics.
• 34:00 - 47:00: Staircase Parts and Construction This chapter discusses the use of legs and curtains in stage construction, particularly focusing on their role in guiding audience's hearing by blocking backstage noise and visual distractions. The chapter highlights the utility of flat drapes in creating a visual wall and managing on-stage action sounds to ensure the audience gets a clear auditory and visual experience.
• 47:00 - 57:00: Designing Pit Stairs The chapter explores the process of designing pit stairs, focusing on the aesthetic and practical elements involved. There is particular attention given to the use of original architectural drapes to cover areas of the theatre, even in low-light conditions. The discussion highlights the challenges of visually demonstrating these elements in a dark setting, where features like the fullness of the drapes may not be easily visible.

Stagecraft Chp 8 Building Scenery Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] thanks so much for taking some time to talk to us about scene construction which the the textbook labels that chapter about scene construction but they don't actually show you how to build too much scene or he in there they talk more about the different parts you'll find on a stage and they start off with fabric John so I was kind of
• 00:30 - 01:00 curious if do we have those kinds of drapes here yeah so in our black box we've actually got a wonderful assortment of drapes lo and behold most of our drapes are black drapes why do we have black drapes in a theater you might ask ray mainly to cut down on the light focus people's attention right or focus their direction of where you want them to see so we've got what are called legs
• 01:00 - 01:30 on the sides of the theater so just upstage of the proscenium and I'm not sure how well you can see on this side is a series of legs and we put these horizontally across the stage so they run from stage left to stage right and you'll put a set of legs in one place and then you'll put another set of legs just upstage from that and that creates kind of an alleyway or a portal
• 01:30 - 02:00 between the legs to allow for scenery to come out through for actors to be able to enter an exit okay and I also helps frame the stage so if you remember your legs and your masking all help with sight lines okay so if you're an audience member you want to make sure that you're not looking into
• 02:00 - 02:30 the backstage area and all of a sudden breaking the theatrical experience and the magic right because all of a sudden if you've got this wonderful piece going on and you're an audience member in the seats and you pay attention in the action also know that the corner of your eye you've got some other guy that's over there in the wings and you just kind of see him peering out from behind one of the wing the legs that's on the side there what was on you're like well what's he doing what what's going on over there behind that dream and you lose all the
• 02:30 - 03:00 theatrical magic that's happening on stage right so you always want to keep the audience engaged so the legs are always there to mask everything outside so for this side we've got the proscenium which is acting as a leg [Music] underneath the seating area in the black
• 03:00 - 03:30 box theater here everything's condensed a little bit so we actually have to hang more legs underneath the balcony to cut down on those sight lines even further so that really starts to keep those entrances and exits really really small in our space so the we can see drapes extending from the grid all the way down to the floor but also then underneath
• 03:30 - 04:00 the balcony are more drapes one of the other things John that the book talks about is something called fullness as compared to a flat drape do you can you show us an example of something like that is that yeah how would we looking at these two legs on either side those have fullness in them and right now they're they have even more fullness because they're doubled back so what does fullness means it means that
• 04:00 - 04:30 they've actually when they sew the drape together the leg together they've taken more fabric than the width that they want and they gather it together and what does that do it helps to cut down on the light as well as sound right and makes the legs or whatever drape it is really really sound absorbent because now you've got multiple folds and multiple layers that really really focus all of the sounding kind of catches so that
• 04:30 - 05:00 just the audience is hearing what they need to so you're gonna use them as legs quite a bit to trap some of that backstage noise as well as any other action that's going on on stage so that just the audience kind of hears that and then over here it looks like you have flat drape boy it's hard to see here in the dark just running along the side of the audience here so the flat drape really creates just a wall of a curtain
• 05:00 - 05:30 sometimes it's a lot cleaner line as well so I've got a full drape over here that was original architecture drapes that hide the bays this is funny because there's no light in a theatre and we're trying to show you black drapes in a dark place so I don't know how well this is reading but yeah that's great oh really yes there's some fullness there
• 05:30 - 06:00 down in I can get a little on the floor as compared to that flat drape in your hand okay sorry where the other parts of the drape your masking system is going to be your borders up top okay and the borders cut down on your sight lines for any scenery or in our case in this theater any lighting instruments that the audience might be sitting at and looking up into the space so it creates
• 06:00 - 06:30 that kind of proscenium look in here off the audience yeah into their cables yeah I see a curtain truck that's up there but you can't see that when yep either with the borders are in gotcha so in a fly space borders might be you know ten feet high and come down so that way they hide a whole bunch of
• 06:30 - 07:00 scenery just because of their distance between borders so they create all of these porters and portals and you're gonna have a border usually typically right where a leg is so a leg will come down and you'll put a border right up next to it so it creates this frame and then you put another leg and another border upstage of that so it's a series of pork so it's almost like undecorated proscenium arches movin upstage drives
• 07:00 - 07:30 things one of the other things that the book talks about is the psyche and we don't have any theater lights on and this psyche is raised up right now but it's referencing something that forms a big sky cloth back there and if we were to have a cyclorama in a theater that
• 07:30 - 08:00 would wrap around left and right because some theaters really big that way but it's just a very large piece of seamless muslin and then when it's lit it gives you that sense of sky another thing that the book talks about John is cut drops and happily here we are in the theater with what we could call cut drop I see a bridge here or what looks a little like
• 08:00 - 08:30 an old stone bridge and I also see a cafe over here and it looks like there's a piece of wood up there on the top that's kind of holding that things [Music] pieces of muslin that we ended up cartooning when they we're down on the ground and then rigged them so that they would become this lip drop or cut drop and look for the
• 08:30 - 09:00 performance so what that means is it started out as one whole surface and then once it was hanging or once we figured out where to top was we cut different portals or entrances and exits in so if you look at closely these are really just simple muslin but when you look at it from the front it creates this kind of three-dimensional looking scenery because of the depth of it and being able to get things in and get
• 09:00 - 09:30 things out within this very lightweight material that's here and that's the case over here during the second act [Music]
• 09:30 - 10:00 so as we're climbing the stairs stairs here we noticed there was a flat leg in space that's actually blocking the balcony exit an entrance door and this cuts down on the light that's in the main hallway here for anybody that's entering and exiting so this is a flat
• 10:00 - 10:30 leg so again it's very flat it's there's just the same amount of fabric that's needed in here but I can also tie fullness into this so rather than this leg being 10 feet long I think it is I can make it 5 feet long and shorten it all down but that creates the fullness into it as well so you can make a flat drop or a flat leg full but you can't make a full leg
• 10:30 - 11:00 flat another thing that we typically don't use too much in the main theater however we do use it quite a bit upstairs in our Maren as a series of flats and they used to make flats that would be soft covered they're really lightweight they store way to nothing because they're two-dimensional scenery and you can paint them over and over and over again and get several lives out of them before you have to kind of chuck
• 11:00 - 11:30 them and throw them away and so for a soft covered flat but they'll typically do is take this one by and it can be several different thicknesses I think this one's a 1 by 3 looking at it so that's three quarters of an inch by two and a half that might be a three inches nominal on there and they'll do two sides to it and have your top as well as your bottom and then what they'll do is
• 11:30 - 12:00 they'll frame the corners of that with triangular pieces of luan or a smaller plywood piece and that gives it that gives it its strength okay so this thing really doesn't go out of being square it's really really tight in here okay and then what they'll do is the site that doesn't have your plywood on here is they'll take a piece of fabric and
• 12:00 - 12:30 they'll catch that and bring it around the backside and they'll steep it up staple it all the way to the frame and I've got another one here that's completed it gives you a nice flat surface on the side here all of that is all stapled on to the back of it but you haven't put any paint on it so it's just it's very very basic right now there's no paint on
• 12:30 - 13:00 in process and if you look at what happens when this thing wobbles anyways the whole entire fabric flat then wobbles so what they've gone and done is created Hollywood flats then so then you start to get into taking your 1 by and rather than running it flat you'll actually turn it sideways and you'll turn your top one sideways and you'll attach those joints together and then
• 13:00 - 13:30 they'll cover that with a hard surface and they typically use luan when you cover that with a hollywood-style flat or a hard covered flat and that way when it shakes the whole thing doesn't wobble back and forth but instead it's got a rigidity to it and really strong and solid and you can also clamp two of those together so then you can build entire walls really quickly the blue on gives you a nice surface to flat or to
• 13:30 - 14:00 paint it anyways to have different backdrops and then you can reuse on so calling it Hollywood flat that sounds like something that the theater has made off with or borrowed or or just kind of taken on board from film or or television yeah the film industry really needed something that wouldn't move when they started to film things so they developed their own style flats
• 14:00 - 14:30 and then the theater kind of stole it from them or maybe not steal but just borrowed it from me thanks John also in that chapter they talk about doors we don't normally around here do too many sets with walls and doors and flats but it's really good to know what it is that they're talking about what's that you've gotten your hands here so this is a paneled door and there most big-box
• 14:30 - 15:00 stores at all of them anyways and some of them will you can buy either just the door or you can buy it are already pre framed which is really really nice this one we've utilized probably two or three times so it's a little rougher shape but it's got enough two side frames and then the top of the frame as well so you build an opening for that and then you install the frame into it and then put
• 15:00 - 15:30 some trim on either side of the frame that's already there and you popped your door into place so the already pre framed ones make life really really quick however in theatres we typically have odd sized doors because you gotta have either bigger scenery coming through or smaller doors because you wanted to fit into a tight spot and look a little different so if you look behind me here we have a bunch of doors that we keep in
• 15:30 - 16:00 stock which are a bunch of different sizes some of them are flat some of them are specialty doors and then some we've just built for certain productions and decided to keep them around one of the next things in the chapter on building scenery scenic construction our platforms can you tell us a little bit about the different kinds of platforms what do you have here your kind of a
• 16:00 - 16:30 bunch of they're typically four feet by eight feet it just so happens that's the same size as the sheet of plywood so this is four feet wide by eight feet long and what you do is you bring that in with two by fours if I lift this up you look at I've got two by fours that run the length of it one on the top one on the bottom when I hold it up and then I've
• 16:30 - 17:00 got other two by fours that spin it at every two foot intervals so two foot four foot six foot and then eight foot all the way along so this is a traditional four by a platform that you would find a lot of times 80s 90s early 2000s this was the traditional style platform that you would find and it's really fast you can put a leg on here I like to use them for lower platforms
• 17:00 - 17:30 just because I can put a two by four leg on here that's maybe six eight 10 inches high and it makes for a really quick plan aside from this and we can also put casters on it and we'll talk about wagons in another chapter so another kind that theaters have developed over the past decade decade and a half is with a stress skin
• 17:30 - 18:00 platform in the theater world we call them Triscuits and then there's variations off of that either being half dressed Triscuits or I like to call them Wheat Thins and Doritos so a full Triscuit is gonna be a 4x4 platform and it's a stress skin so it's the same as the older traditional style but we make them thinner so I've got a 2x4 frame that I've ripped down to more like a 2x2 and
• 18:00 - 18:30 then I put a platform or a piece of plywood on top and then a thinner piece of plywood on the bottom and what we're doing there is we're using the physics of the boards by having our 3/4 inch plywood on top and then if you look at there's a thin a layer here that's the thinner piece of plywood and this is my 2x4 and that's framed in so I've got all the way on the two sides there's two by fours that are two by twos that run all the way along
• 18:30 - 19:00 and then one here and then another will be at two-foot and another at the far end because the platform you're looking at here is only two feet wide by four feet long so it's again another building size off of our four by eight sheets of plywood that we use two foot by four foot four foot by four foot or doritoes which is a diagonal on those so it's four feet four feet and then you cut at
• 19:00 - 19:30 the diagonal so what you're using is the top force when you step on this it's gonna push down but at the same time the bottom plywood is gonna push against that force so you're using contract contradicting forces for your strength basically between those two platforms because because it's a flat surface on the bottom and the top though we have to then think about these platforms
• 19:30 - 20:00 differently and how we want to create the height for them okay so the book calls for a system called Gading Gading which I like to call them stud walls because I don't know I came from the construction industry and gating is a term I think the book uses but the book uses what I have I've never really heard it too much outside of the book so essentially what that is is you're
• 20:00 - 20:30 gonna have a two-by-four stop top plate and a two-by-four top bottom plate and then you're gonna have a series of two by fours that run vertically to support your platform so in the book this one's really really short so there's only two uprights in this but if I was looking at a platform that was maybe eight feet wide or so I would have put a 2x4 vertically every
• 20:30 - 21:00 you fee so I put one at the end I put one at two feet I put one at four feet I put one at six feet and then I put one at the other end at eight so gating because they look like games I guess and all that has a top rail or a top plate and a bottom plate as well to hold it together so it looks much like a stud wall if you're building a house right and all those are squared off with the diagonal so the diagonal gives it strength so the whole thing does doesn't flatten right out on you I got my kids
• 21:00 - 21:30 here Logan's demonstrating how the stairs work as far as structurally getting from point A to point B so in this case we've got our platform and our gating or stud walls supporting a middle section of the bottom stairs and our top stairs because one long run of like this would be a lot as far as the staircase and where do you
• 21:30 - 22:00 store some of them that big instead it's broken down into two pieces which gives us a little more personality versatility so one more example is with our Triscuits that we're using is in our bridge that set up here so this spans 40 feet between our balconies so that we've got a series of uprights that have two by tens so two inch by two by 10 inch pieces of lumber and on top of those are
• 22:00 - 22:30 my Triscuits so I've got the two by tens that support the span between all of my stud walls my vertical stud walls and then on top of that I put my Triscuit that spans four feet wide and then I've got a series of Triscuits so I've got one at four feet and then I put another one at four feet and another one four feet and that spans my entire bridge going all the way across with Triscuits on top of my Triscuits I've
• 22:30 - 23:00 got a layer of home soap which is sound dampening board so those are four by eight so that spans all the way across and then on top of that I use the masonite and a Mason is that hard surface that I can then paint really easily so the Triscuits are spanning the distance between all of my two by tens got a two by ten on this side and two by ten on the other and the Triscuit spans the rest of the distance so it's really really strong once all of this is put
• 23:00 - 23:30 together it makes for a very sturdy supportive bridge and then these are the vertical supports made out of double two-by-four boy it's hard to see this stuff and then you have some diagonal braces up in there yep just made these as open as possible to allow for people to move through the bridge gotcha okay and then you have double two by tens and
• 23:30 - 24:00 can you refresh everybody how big is an actual 2x4 2x4 is inch and a half wide by three and a half inches thick or tall I guess and a two by ten is what size actually 2 by 10 is going to be an inch and a half wide so that's consistent by nine and a half inches so they take away their half-inch don't they so back here
• 24:00 - 24:30 in scenery storage we've got a bunch of Triscuits that are lined up here and some of them are look unfinished so I wanted to show you a little bit easier here this is gonna be our 2x4 which is cut down to two inches by two inches which is really inch and a half by two inches and then the top of it has that three quarter inch plywood to it so that gives us its strength but then on the bottom there's this really thin layer of quarter-inch plywood here and that
• 24:30 - 25:00 gives its ability to when it goes to flex when you put a lot of weight on the center of that you've got forces that are acting in opposite directions of each other because this plywood wants to bend down and this one wants to bend up and they start to give that platform a lot more strength than if it was just a traditional style 4x8 platform John let's talk a little bit about stairs the book talks about parts of stairs and kinds of different kinds of stairs what
• 25:00 - 25:30 can you tell us about those great so mad woman here has a series of stairs a bottom set and a top set of stairs for the show this is an open carriage there so what that means is as far as parts of it the carriage is gonna be my support that runs all the way down the length of the stairs okay an open carriage means the fact that there's nothing underneath
• 25:30 - 26:00 here that the support comes from the carriage itself that this doesn't drop all the way to the floor and you've got a nice chunk of true bike or piece of plywood here that supports the whole entire stair instead the carriage is gonna be the structural support of this okay so that's open carriage when it's open underneath here and that looks different than some what they put in the book because that carriage looks even
• 26:00 - 26:30 more open than matau tanned these are made out of Steel yeah so these are made out of steel and that's made this way for the strength to weight ratio just because I've got a staircase here that's four feet wide and we made out of steel to really have as the least amount of material but still be really really strong this for you know ten person cast that might be climbing this at once that's a lot of stairs yeah I think
• 26:30 - 27:00 there's 14 stairs here there we go holy go go go go shoo that is a lot of action now what are these other parts of stairs called John yeah so to get us from point A to point B we have the top of the stair it's called the tread so if you think
• 27:00 - 27:30 about your foot tread it's gonna be the part that your foot is gonna step onto okay and then the other part is gonna be your rise okay so this will be your rise a riser as your distance between the tread so for a typical staircase that you're gonna find in most homes they're gonna be ten inches wide so your tread is gonna be 10 inches and your rise is
• 27:30 - 28:00 gonna be 8 inches okay for this bigger staircase and not having a railing on the other side because in theater we typically like sight lines open we don't want our actors to be blocked so we wanted to make this a little wider it's a little safer that way so these are actually 12 inches wide and then 8
• 28:00 - 28:30 inches tall now I noticed that our crew here is heading down these other stairs they're making their way all around what's this staircase that's here yeah so the stairs in the theater itself here these vary a little bit different because these are for our patrons these are for the audience members so we wanted to make things really really easy on our audience members as well as for our seating arrangements so these
• 28:30 - 29:00 I have a little bit less area to travel up in height so these actually are a rise of six inches so if you think about it those were an eight inch rise these are only six so it's two inches less so I don't have time climb is high in order to get up onto my risers as far as the seating area okay and then these are also a foot deep so 12 inches deep so 12 inches by a six
• 29:00 - 29:30 inch rise so it's a lot more gradual these are also a closed carriage so if you look at this the platform goes all the way down on the side so that enables the structural support of these to be carried all the way down to the floor as opposed to that open the edge that you just showed us over here John we're here in the scene shop talking about stairs what's going on right here at this table yes so for madwoman and hopefully shows
• 29:30 - 30:00 beyond mad woman we've got to get in and out of the pit with a set of staircases so what we're doing is we're building stairs here for the pit and of course with the pit we're always talking about a very steep angle so we just talked about the stairs on stage both for patrons as well as for the actors but these are also be for the actors but we got to make them disappear really really quick and in a short amount of space so looking at this this is still going to
• 30:00 - 30:30 be an open carriage just because it's open but because we're using only one-inch steel I wanted to carry this all loyd down to the floor well so this is actually the floor over here and you're looking at the top part and this is we haven't welded it together yet so all of these pieces can start to come out as you can see so for this each one of my treads so the horizontal pieces will be my tread if you look at that's really pretty short
• 30:30 - 31:00 I made these at 8 inches and I'm gonna move it over just a little bit more and get maybe 9 inches out of it so it's still fairly deep as far as the stair goes but then if you look at this is a really far distance for them to travel so this is already at a foot so if I'm traveling at 8 inches wide and then dropping down a foot I can really start to descend into that pit really quick so this is only covering about 3 feet or so
• 31:00 - 31:30 and it's got to drop down in 6 feet which is a really steep staircase going into the pit but still manageable for our actors we'll be able to get in and out easily so that's your carriage what are you doing for treads John yeah so treads I'm gonna use steep for all of my treads as well so there's gonna be no plywood in this and the reason I'm doing that is because I want to be able to
• 31:30 - 32:00 light up through my treads for theatrical effects in the pit so I might put a light down here at the bottom and shine it all the way up through and if you look I'm gonna make all of my treads pieces of steel and that allows the light to come up through these but still create a surface or my actors can be able to climb down these as well
• 32:00 - 32:30 and that looks pretty narrow as a tread no staircase go on so that'll be 8 inches okay and there's completed ones right on the other side of us for the entry upstairs that are already completed going into the petal you want to take a look at that one for years oh we're back into the pit here here's the staircase that actually exits out of the pit and I'm making pretty close to the same variation except for this carriage on the sides of it extend beyond the
• 32:30 - 33:00 tread and I'm actually making my carriage on the underside of it that way I can stack staircases next to each other and make it wider if I need to without having this carriage in the way but if you look in this is all open this is a completed one so all of these pieces of steel here come all the way through and I can shine a light up through them but at the same time I can climb out and these are eight inches wide by a book high so this is the same
• 33:00 - 33:30 thing if I go ahead and step out of this [Music] to get down into the pit here so that's about the distance we're looking to typically drop down in we've done it before with ladders and that works the same thing that'll be even steeper it's like a ship's ladder isn't it and
• 33:30 - 34:00 actually over here by the pit is a ladder so it's not all that different than latter along the way three things