Welcome to the Mod Scenes podcast. This is episode 1 34, about how to build incredible stage backdrops with your friends at Mod Scenes. Uh, my name’s Steven, I lead the team at mods scenes, and I’m really excited to be chatting with you today, uh, and specifically chatting with you, uh, about creating sets with, um, with more hard materials. So, um, obviously it mod scenes, we make really lightweight, easy to use, uh, stage designs, uh, stage backdrops and church stage designs. Um, but with those, um, some people are, some people either, you know, want to use a little bit less money on their set, or they want to get a specific look that might not be able to be accomplished with plastics. Uh, so we’re going to chat about a couple of different options, uh, and we’re going to do it through the lens of a set design. I did a few years ago, uh, for VBX for, uh, our church.
So, uh, we decided that we wanted to great a stage backdrops for our church, um, that consisted of multiple themed areas. Uh, and the VBX theming was, uh, VBX around the world, essentially. Uh, so we decided and well, I’ll rephrase that. I decided my infinite wisdom, uh, and, uh, uh, sarcastic wisdom. Uh, yeah, there we go. Uh, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to be wise to, uh, do a new stage Steph every single day. So we decided to be, well, this stage set out of, uh, hard materials, uh, in particular lumber. So all the framing was done with two by fours. We created flats that were mounted to trusses, uh, using steel banding. Um, so the flats, uh, let’s start with the, the, the main layout, cause we had a base layout that we tweaked every day, every day to make it look like a different location.
So, uh, our central building was a storefront type building, so it was a brick upper facade that had a billboard in the center. Uh, that billboard actually, it was, uh, it was a white billboard, so a blank billboard that we used, uh, for a video screen and we used during walk-ins and walk-outs we played back, uh, stuff that looked like a billboard essentially, um, based on the country location, uh, uh, and then the rest of the wall was made to look like brick. It wasn’t actual brick though. It was a brick board, which is a Mason material it’s painted to look like brick. Um, and we cut that out, um, cut that out so that there’s windows and did green trim around the entire thing. So it looked nice and finished. Um, so that was, uh, that was nice once it was finished, um, painted the trim, like a dark green. Uh, so it was kind of neutral when we could kind of tweak it a little bit. We ended up painting it, repainting it a couple of times during the week to, uh, change cities. So the first, uh, the first country, I should say, uh, countries. Um, so along with that off
To one side, we had kind of a flex area where we did, um, where we did some extra, uh, uh, like smaller type stuff. Um, and then on the other side, we had a building that looked like a church, um, and we tweak that, uh, throughout the day as well or throughout the week. Um, so our first country was the United States. So, uh, it was based kind of like a rural downtown area, um, like kind of quintessential main street feel. Uh, so with that quintessential main street feel we did, um, we did the breakfast facade, uh, in the center, did a nice little storefront with flowers, made it look like it was a flower shop on the main street area. We did a little square, um, off to one side with some plants and some lamps and stage backdrops and some, uh, um, some benches. Um, and then to the other side, we did a, uh, kind of a country church looking the visual, uh, white painted church. And, uh, yeah, so I’m going to actually, uh, hop off this podcast and finish the rest of this podcast about stage backdrops and specifically about VDX, um, in a moment. Uh, but yeah,
And through the incredible magic of editing I’m back. So, uh, continuing on this awesome stage backdrops design we did for, uh, VBX. So as I was mentioning, we did, uh, our first country, we were in was the U S we did a main town mean street kind of feel for the stage backdrop. Um, so obviously within a church stage backdrop, a lot of times you’re not going for super realism, uh, whereas for VBX, we were, uh, so after we did the, uh, United States, uh, area, we moved on to doing, um, the next day, which was in China. So, uh, we had some really cool things for this. So we took that original brick storefront, and we retrofitted it. We put, uh, some red fabric awnings on it. We put on these really beautiful, uh, red hand painted drops, uh, that one of our volunteers, Google search, different, uh, sayings and, uh, uh, in Mandarin and wrote them out onto these, uh, big drops that went on the building, um, which was pretty awesome.
Um, let’s see, what else. Uh, we removed all of the stuff from the, uh, the square area. So the lamps, the, uh, the lamps, the seats, the plants that we had over there, we removed all of that. Uh, and we made it, uh, more, uh, I think we did a little bit of bamboo. Um, and then we did, uh, what was it? We did, uh, like a food card, I think, uh, like Asian looking food cart, if I’m remembering correctly. Uh, it has been a couple of years since we did this set, but, um, at least that was what’s in the original plan. Uh, and then on the other side, uh, we, uh, the church building, we turned into, uh, I think just a home, but we took, uh, I think actually what we did is we left the facade as it was, we took down the, like the, the markings that made it look like a church, puts them up, lights on that, and then put like a little, uh, Oriental type of divider up in front of it, just to give it some depth.
Um, and then the big thing we did is we hung Chinese lanterns everywhere and not like, like two or three, but like, I think we hung like 130 of them. It was crazy. We’d done a ton of them all hit. It looked awesome. Uh, it hasn’t some photos on my blog, church lights.blogspot.com. Uh, you should check it out because it is stupid epic. Um, yes. Okay. So after we finished, uh, with the stage backdrop for the China area, uh, we went to Africa for the last day of VBX. So with our VBX stage design, we, uh, um, for Africa we took and the building that was a church, we took mud actual, real mud and got it a little bit wet and got on some washcloths and just wipe the whole building down in mud, um, which was absolutely disgusting, but it, it made it look completely different, uh, as opposed to painting.
I don’t know why we use mud, uh, probably cause we all had paint. We did ourselves so much at that point that it wasn’t even funny. Um, let’s see. So the big brick facade building, uh, we took actually, we didn’t, uh, we left the brick on there, but we got a Brad nailer. So like a little, uh, air powered stapler, and we stapled on, um, some like roof batching, uh, which was old. It’s a little bit more island dish, but, um, it, uh, was the closest we could get in the timeline we had. So, um, we did a little bit of that. And then we also did some like old rusty looking metal and put on the top of the tops of the roofs of the buildings, um, and then got tons and tons of plants, every plant we could find in the building and then some, and put them all around.
Uh, the area, uh, made like a little crossroads area where the original room was like, uh, like, uh, a park, I guess, uh, in the original, in the U S uh, on the U S day. Uh, so we went through and we made that kind of, uh, like a crossroads. There was, uh, like a, like a big post and some fencing and a sign that said Timbuktu this way, such and such this way, Nairobi this way and mile markers and stuff. So that was pretty cool. Um, well obviously we took down all the Chinese lanterns, uh, and we lit the whole thing with really, really warm tone. So Amber is CTO, uh, a nice, um, subtle pink we did from sidelight. Um, and we, we, we utilize for all three sets. We utilized our existing lighting. Uh, we didn’t buy anything new, uh, but we did rearrange how we had it all.
Um, so we kind of gritted out the one-on-ones, so they would fit around all the different set pieces. Uh, and then we put some up lights in the back of the window facades of the main store section, um, that we use there’s backlights for all kinds of stuff. Um, so yeah, so that’s, that’s, uh, the VBX stage design we did over at journey church, I believe that was in 2015, 2016. Yeah. I believe 2016. Uh, we did some other cools, uh, some other cool church stage designs and some other points, um, for VBX. Um, if you want to see those, you’re more than welcome to check them out. They’re on my personal blog, which is, uh, church lights.blogspot.com. Uh, and at some point in the future, we’ll probably jump through a bunch of those on this podcast as well. So, uh, thank you again for tuning into the monsoons podcast. Uh, I hope it was a super educational, fun, uh, Blasey blast, and that you want to come back and listen hundreds of millions of more times, uh, and hopefully that I can actually record that many podcasts. Um, so yeah, thanks again for checking out our podcasts on church stage design and specifically our stage backdrop design for VDX. Uh, if there’s any other way we can serve you, shoot us an email. Uh, you can see our contact info@modscenes.com. Uh, thanks again for tuning in today for stage backdrops.
Recent Comments