City of Angels

City of Angels-TSD

City of angels is based in the 1940s and follows two main characters. the Author (Stine) and his films Private investigator protagonist (stone). the musical regularly switches in between the real-life situations of Stine and then the effects that has on his writing of his film. the setting to accommodate the artistic styling of switching between a film noir TV set and real-life, was really interesting to work with as all of the flats and trucks were double-sided which were moved and altered during the show to allow for seamless scene changes. some of the set pieces were very versatile as they would have separating parts that allowed the same piece of the set to give an entirely different look in 2 or 3 different ways.

there were a few key pieces of set as well as the moving trucks and flats. The other pieces of the set consisted of an automated lift which we used the E-Cham automation software and our four big tows to accommodate. there was also two large warehouse door which would track on and off which were operated by the crew. a problem faced when building and operating this piece of set was that due to the scenery carriers being placed on the back of the set the bottom of the dock doors would kick out which made closing and opening the doors problematic. to deal with this issue we placed drop bolts on the bottom of the doors so that it created a solid fixing from the truss to the ground.

The most prominent piece of set was the nearly 10mx2mx3m truss bridge which was supported using its own legs and 4 2 ton chain motors. calculating the maximum capacity for this bridge can be done by breaking the bridge up into sections. referring to the Prolyte truss loading table you can determine the maximum capacity of the outer strands, however, in order to give the most suitably safe figure you should find out the maximum weight that can be applied to the weakest point which is the very center of the center strand. it is important to note that although the maximum load of a two-point supported 9m strand isn't a lot, the weight is dispersed by the wooden cladding on the top which acts in the same way as a baton would disperse weight between three points. this allows the bridge to accommodate the approximate weight of 10 people (1 person weighing 90Kg) with 2 people in a square meter.

The interval scene change was extremely busy as it had to be done in a very specific order s that no set pieces would crash, this was due to the large footprint of the shows setting. The interval change involved re-rigging hemp bars altering set pieces and redressing the automation lift which took several crew members from various departments which all worked well together in order for a smooth scene change which was done in front of the audience as we couldn't bring the iron in as it cut off too much space to fit the set around.

Shown below are the pre-show checks and the fly plot for City of Angels. This was overall, a fairly simple show once it was up and running as there were only a small amount of cues. The amount of bars and automation in use was very high though so this meant I had to heavily plan where all bars, and the lift, would sit in relation to the stage in order to also keep with the designers vision.