Here is PRG’s latest “webisode,” on the show’s automation.
Archive for the ‘Staging/Rigging’ Category
Fred Gallo’s Technical Direction For Spider-Man
Photo Jacob Cohl
A spider is an eight-legged creature. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has as many moving parts, and keeping them fully functional is the job of Fred Gallo, Production Resource Group founder and president of PRG’s Scenic Technologies division.
Gallery: Spider-Man Load-In
Fred Gallo from PRG provided us with some shots he took during the initial load-in of Spider-Man at the Foxwoods Theatre.
Kyle Cooper’s Projection Design For Spider-Man
Kyle Cooper's video content
Unlike his colleagues, Kyle Cooper, an Emmy winner, has Spider-Man experience, having designed the acclaimed title sequences for all three movies, and for many others besides. But this is his first Broadway show, and it came to him via his work with Julie Taymor on her films Titus (1999), Across the Universe (2007), and, as production ramped up, The Tempest (2010).
Fisher Technical Flies High With Spider-Man, Part 2
The second challenge for Fisher Technical Services was how to achieve believable, high speed, superhero-level flight sequences over the audience, often involving more than one performer at a time. Traditional 3D flight systems are very good at this type of movement, but it’s difficult to coordinate the rigging for a multi-line system with other objects in the space, as the lines will “sweep” through the entire volume of the flight space during motion. Since the main flight sequence involved Spider Man actually engaging in full-contact, mano-a-mano aerial combat with the Green Goblin over the audience, an alternative had to be devised.
Fisher Technical Services Flies High With Spider-Man
Bouncing Off The Walls
Probably the first thing to clear up on the performer flight systems for Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark is this: Spider-Man can’t actually fly. “Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man refers to himself as a ‘webslinger,’ which is not the same as flying—he can jump very high and very far, and he can swing on a web line from location to location, but unlike a lot of other superheroes (and supervillians, for that matter) he does not possess the power of flight,” says Scott Fisher, principal of Fisher Technical Services (FTSI) of Las Vegas, NV, who were contacted to provide the performer flight systems for the show.
Spider-Man Scenic Design Team
Scenic Design Team
George Tyspin, scenic design
Rob Bissinger, associate designer
Arturo Virtmanis, dimensional design
Baiba Baiba, graphic design
Sergei Goloshapov, cityscape graphics
George Tsypin’s Scenic Design For Spider-Man
Scenic model shot courtesy of George Tsypin
This is the second Broadway musical for George Tsypin, the sculptor, architect, and opera designer, following Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and his first impulse was to send the show airborne. “We had to find a theatrical language to capture the world of comic books,” Tsypin says. “I desperately wanted to bring that illustrative world into space, which led me to the idea of pop-up books, which brilliantly do both. And I felt that everything had to move, and fly, like Spider-Man, and enlarge the experience.”
Spider-Man Creative Team
Photo Jacob Cohl
Original Director: Julie Taymor
Choreography and Ariel Choreography: Daniel Ezralow
Additional Choreography: Chase Brock
Resident Director: Keith Batten
Resident Choreographer: Jason Snow