Massive sets
About
Some of the sets built in the National’s workshops are very large, sometimes up to 10 metres tall and 15 metres across. Keeping the pieces of set flowing along the production line from the workshop into the paintframe requires skilful time management.People featured in this video include:
Ken Rose, Deputy Head of Scenic Construction
Paul Evans, Head of Scenic Construction
John Pickersgill, Draughtsperson / Senior Carpenter
NT productions referenced in this video include:
Afterlife by Michael Frayn. Directed by Michael Blakemore. Set designed by Peter Davison. Lyttelton Theatre 2008.
Transcript
Ken Rose: As big as the workshop is it really is never big enough. We’ve got a set at the moment, Afterlife, which is absolutely enormous; I think some of the bigger flats are 10 metres tall and they go full across the width of the Lyttelton stage, which is about 15 metres. So they are immense.
Paul Evans: The current project we’ve got on the go, which is Afterlife, is a very, very large set. It’s very big chunks of scenery, which causes problems for us moving stuff through into the paintframe. They’re so big, as we build them it just fills up the workshop and then the paintframe have the same problem; they’ve got nowhere to work but it’s just a matter of trying to keep the flow through and get stuff out into the rear dock in the Lyttelton. It’s just a case of managing it all the time; it is very, very difficult and there are an awful lot of people involved in trying to make it happen.
John Pickersgill: Just as a draughtsman, it does hit you often; you’re drawing these things up and they don’t look very big on your screen at all and then you see them in the building and think: ‘My God, that’s a fair old size!’
