Just a quick one for now.

Just finished my postmodernity essay, so shall get back to blogging properly soon. Haven't posted in a while now. Just came across this video on YouTube of the current (well, it ended like two days ago) UK tour of Rocky. It's the Floor Show, demonstrating the use of the ladders, which work similarly to how my pipes will work.

Proper posts will be back soon.

The Paint and the Pendulum

It's eight in the evening, I've been doing some drawing and painting, and I am ready to talk to Miss Heather Small...

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TODAY TO MAKE YOU FEEEEL PROOOOUD?"

Well, Heather, I've been taking a closer look at the pendulum for my floor show

design,and going through some redesigns for it. The pendulum and the bronze pipes are the two concepts that I want to keep in my final design, and I want to somehow incorporate Honour and Glory Crowning Time to add a Neoclassical element. Since the scene is open and doesn't require any amount of realism, as the scene is meant to be Frank's fantasy brought to life. I decided to look at the pendulum, and somehow use the clock as part of it. I started by looking at the clock, and kind-of extracting the clock itself from the rest of the image. As seen on the left, the clock without the figures around it and the wooden border is an elaborately carved Neoclassical clock, one that might stand on a mantlepiece or at the top of the stairs, like on the RMS Titanic. Since the clock exists only in the woodcarving, and not as a physical, fully three-dimensional object, I took some liberties with it, such as making the clock face more proportional to the pillar-stand, so that it would look less like a work of art and more like a clock. I also made the stand slightly longer, again to make it proportional.

Below is a similar stage design to the previous one, with the clock integrated into the pendulum.

Although a bit messy (due to me forgetting that watercolours are actually wet), and the colour was a bit lost in translation upon being scanned in, my new design shows the basic form of the clock attached as part of the pendulum's "stem", or whatever that bit's called. Before settling on this, I experimented with having the clock integrated below the pendulum, to work as an extended stem, as seen below.

The initial problem I had with this is that it looked very clunky, and the entire thing no longer looked like a pendulum, as the clock's part of the stem was getting to be almost as long as the piece connecting the main body to the rafters. It also posed the question of how Frank was supposed to dismount from the pendulum after his "Don't Dream It" solo. I thought of turning the clock into a ladder by adding elements similar to the bronze pipes, but I felt that this would make the pendulum over-designed and unfocused.

I did some research on more elaborately decorated pendulums (they're rarer than you'd think)

and managed to find something similar. The clock on the left features a more elaborate pendulum than usual, with the bottom of the "stem" decorated with a carved lyre and a string-like protusion. The added bits are not intended to make the clock any more efficient, but are purely for decoration, much like the Honour and Glory clock, and my pendulum, aside from acting as a seat for Frank. The way that the clock is positioned nearby the bronze pipes would mean that two of the dancers would be able to act as the Honour and Glory figures, crowning the clock.

The colours I used for my painting are vaguely representative of the colours I'd want to use in my final design. I find it difficult to get the colour right with watercolours, as it always looks so different as paint than it does on paper. The curtain I want to be a rich, earthy red, evoking

the traditional image of red velvet theatrical curtains. The gears in the background are black on the outer edges and a steel grey on the inside. The bronze pipes are obviously bronze, but with a more yellowish tint than a red one. The pendulum itself I want to be a dull red-orange, but I want it to have the effect of rough polished iron, like the bottles on the right here. I want it to reflect this texture because it would evoke the images of factories and industrialisation, key elements of the steampunk genre.

Maths is a terrible, terrible thing.

Got the specifications of the theatre we're using as a basis for the project today, and that theatre is Margate Theatre Royal. Because the website is so dedicated to advertising shows and generally making as much money as possible, it does not really feature any actual photographs of the stage. Kind of a major thing there that they've missed out on. So I had to hunt around on Google Images to find a picture of the stage. Well, I assume it's the one. There's no guarantee with Google. We were also given the technical floorplans of the stalls and circle, as well as an elevation view of the stage. Using the measurements as drawn on the paper in some way I don't think I'll ever be able to remember, we were able to work out nearly exact measurements of the stage, which we were then able to divide by 25 to find the 1:25 scale that we needed. That was a long sentence. The theatre itself is pretty standard fare, and fits with the designs I've already produced. Obviously I'll have to modify them slightly and work out the exact measurements that I need everything to be at, but that's easily done. Maths has never really been my strong point (my strong point is apparently blogs. Funny, that.), but the equations used to work out the dimensions of the theatre and the appropriate 1:25 scale weren't that difficult. I just don't remember the process...

"Time reigns over all"

I know, I know. I post videos like a bitch. But they're all relevant, I promise. This is a music video for 'Quietus (Silent Reverie)', a song by my favourite band, Epica. While the song in itself isn't relevant to much, the video is distinctly steampunk. Just ignore the weird and blatantly sexual facial expressions Simone makes when she's singing.

Oh, I suppose it's also relevant that I've chosen to go with steampunk as my final genre. That's pretty important.

One of the interesting things about the video is that it is far more dirty and gritty than other steampunk works. The video is set in an underground mine in the middle of the ocean, far away from the upper-class world of corsets and tailcoats, in the underworld as opposed to the overworld. Steampunk has long been considered a classy yet unpolished genre, whereas this video showcases the dirtier, 'hidden' side of it. Since Rocky Horror is known as being intentionally schlocky and gritty, this could be applied to the floor show somehow. For instance, the floating clockwork platform that the band are seen performing on could form the basis for the performance area seeing as it is already akin to a stage. This would make the space more interesting, and less bare, as it is in my previous design. I know I definitely want spinning cogs in there somewhere.

Another interesting aspect of the song is the artwork for the two versions of the CD single, as seen below.

It is interesting that both use a stylised clock as the focus of the cover. The upper artwork features a clock that looks to be designed like a fairground or church organ, or an imagined steampunk-age jukebox. The lower is a simpler design, but appears to be influenced by the Italian Renaissance era of paintings. Using these as a basis, I would like to experiment with having a huge working clock as the backdrop of my design, which could assist with the narrative, such as striking midnight when Riff Raff and Magenta make their entrance, signalling the end for Frank and his fantasies.

Just had another idea. Although not really related to steampunk, this makes me think of one of the most famous clocks in the world, the twin ones that were installed on RMS Titanic and Olympic, known as Honour and Glory Crowning Time.

Don't want to go too far into this, as it's not really steampunk, but I thought it could be interesting to have a steampunk version of that clock, with Columbia and Janet crowning it, somehow, as 'Honour' and 'Glory' are doing on the actual clock. Something to think about...

"Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire..."

Another rough, basic set idea for a Luciferian-themed Floor Show. With added colour. I spoil you.

Obviously not to scale, and rather poor in quality, this design shows Frank as a Lucifer-figure, descending down on a set of light and dark wings, clothed in a waist-cloth, fishnets, and a feather headdress. The red lightning bolt in the background is a traditional symbol of the Transylvanians for the Rocky Horror community, appearing mostly in the film adaptation. Frank's wings would be attached to the lightning bolt, and he would separate

from them once finishing his "Don't Dream It" solo. Since a harness would not work, as there is no upper clothing to hide this, I had the idea to make it like the "cherrypicker" lift used in Wicked for Defying Gravity.

Now, just imagine that, but in reverse. And without any witches.

I'm not really a Wicked fan. Seriously. I've only seen it five times in two different countries. *cough*.

Anyway, I think the wings could work in that Frank could be standing on a small platform, which locks around his waist, and descending (rather than Wicked's ascent). This would make it easier to stage, and less obvious to the audience than a massive great harness. Although I think I'm going too far away from set design here...

The dead branches at the upper section of the stage are primarily framing devices, but are frequent themes in Doré's illustrations for Paradise Lost. Doré's work always makes me feel very odd, as if I'm looking at something human eyes aren't meant to look at. This is always most obvious with the illustration accompanying the line "dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before" from Poe's The Raven (my all-time favourite poem, along with Carroll's Jabberwocky, but that has nothing to do with anything.)

The image is very ethereal and otherworldly, seeming to show something that has never been and should never be seen before, which is pertinent to the line. It is possible that I could attempt to incorporate some of this into a future design.

The Corinthian pillars are another form of framing, something that is key to the scene for a dramatic entrance. This type of pillar is common in many Biblical epic, as well as high fantasy. One particular book that sticks out in mind concerning this is Wendy Alec's The Fall of Lucifer.

I decided to leave the backdrop very bare for several reasons. One reason is that a backdrop could detract from the impact of Frank's magnificent wings, which would not be the effect I want. Another reason is that there is very little in the way of backdrop that this scene requires. The scene is Frank's flight of fantasy, so very little in the way of reality is needed.

"I beheld Satan, as lightning fell from Heaven..."

..I swear that's from the Catholic rite of exorcism...or from something used in exorcism. Well, whatever.

The third genre I'm going to be looking at is Luciferian Biblical epics, in the vein of, and centering on, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. In the 2006 U.K. tour souvenir programme of The Rocky Horror Show, creator Richard O'Brien states "I think that Fran

k is more of a Lucifer ... it can be argued that Lucifer was wronged by God. Lucifer said to Go - I'll bow down to you but not to any of your creations - and for showing such defiance, he was sent down below. You could see Lucifer as the original Prodigal Son". This made me think of Frank as a Luciferian (incorrect adjective but it's as close as I can get) figure. I could picture an entrance with Frank dressed only in a glittery, angelic loincloth, with huge feathered wings, descending from above. The fanfare that signals his entrance is grand and verging on epic, and as such, the entrance he makes must match the music. A visual aid of what I mean can be seen in the character Kefka Palazzo, the antagonist from Final Fantasy VI, who appears initially as a clown-like figure, but slowly becomes a Lucifer-like god towards the end of the story. At the beginning of the final battle, he appears dramatically to the group of heroes (set to the piece of music called 'Dancing Mad', which is probably the most epic piece of game music ever. No arguing).

Kefka appears draped with an angelic, purple loincloth, and huge golden wings. If I could combine this with Gustave Doré's original illustrations for Paradise Lost, I could

create an interesting entrance for Frank, as if he were 'lowered from the heavens' by a huge set of wings.

Earlier in the year, we were shown a video from the Royal Shakespeare Company of the development of a set for The Tempest in which Ariel descends from above on a set of huge wings which were actually part of the wall which was being lowered down, with the actor playing Ariel in an attached harness. This is something I could consider when creating my designs.

Paradise Lost is one of my favourite poems. It combines grandeur with mortal sin and betrayal. Rocky Horror is full of religious imagery and allegories, such as the Narrator referring to Brad and Janet as having "tasted forbidden fruit". The Floor Show features Frank as a deity-like figure, being worshipped by the 'mortals', Brad, Janet, Columbia and Rocky, as well as the audience watching the show, who go wild at Frank's entrance. As such, Biblical themes in the Floor Show may work very well, if I can come up with some decent designs. I have some drafted designs in my sketchbook but nothing solid yet.

OH WAIT, ONE MORE THING....

A bootlegged performance of the Floor Show from the 2001 Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show. Terrence Mann starring as Frank.

Don't tell me that isn't awesome.

The key thing about this particular production is that it was the

first to have radically different staging and costumes than any of the previous productions. It is also the first major production to be performed on a thrust stage. The extended part of the stage here takes the form of a kind of catwalk, with lights running along the edge. The proscenium and curtain are used as part of the scene, as if they exist both in the real world and the world of the show. The intriguing thing about the 'catwalk' is that the very end of it turns over on itself to be used as a fake seating area for the ensemble (referred to as the Phantoms). This is to give the impression that the Phantoms are watching the play as a film, in a cinema. The fact that they then get up and get involved with the show itself mirrors the audience participation aspect of the show (as heard in the video).

The costumes are particularly interesting in this version

of the show. The costumes worn by the four "lesser" characters are virtually the same, and are as depicted in this picture of Alice Ripley as Janet. The colours are quite radically different from those seen in past productions, as typically the costumes are toned-down replicas of Frank-N-Furter's regular costume. Here, the bodices are brightly and intricately coloured with reds, golds, and purples. This makes the scene feel more glitzy and 'high-class' than other productions.