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Crystal Meth Induced Prop Innovation

By Brian Clark on September 7, 2007 11:42 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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One of the few downsides of staging an event inside a public storage facility is the lack of electricity in the units. Apparently that (at least in part) is to help prevent crystal meth labs from setting up shop (may I also suggest you avoid using in-room coffee pots in hotels?)

Without power (or with very limited power), our major concern was lighting, and our experiments with glowsticks seemed to produce the most reliable results. The designs for the central set piece, an altar, began to morph to serve as the light source for the rest of the room. Our preliminary tests the week before (pictured here) gave us enough confidence to skip electric lighting altogether. Inside, we show you the how-to steps.

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The altar starts life as plexiglass: a 3' x 3' piece and four 3' x 1' side pieces (sliced for us by Home Depot). The earlier prototype designs for the altar were inverted (white text on black instead of the opposite) and turned into a large-format vinyl sticker (where the black image was printed onto a clear vinyl -- we made Cultist #5 pick it up from the Kinkos.) In theory, if everyone made their cuts right, this should all just slap together, right? Right, guys? Why doesn't this look exactly right? Wait, does that Arabic line up? What if we turn it the other way? Let's make sure we have this right before we affix the $200 sticker to the $200 in plexiglass.

Applying a 3' x 3' vinyl sticker isn't as easy as it sounds, but proves successful. Now, how are we going to glue that all together when we get it Atlanta? Pow-wow reality check time.

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We decided the best solution would be a small wooden frame, allowing us to Superglue the plexiglass flat to the wood frame instead of at a right angle to another piece of plexiglass. Of course, that makes a lousy support, we plan to line to bottom of the platform with reflective material already, so a simple milkcrate seems enough to support what it needs to support. We lay down some white paper to simulate that reflectiveness and pop some glowsticks to stage a few test photos.

We're pleased with the test results, even with just a handfull of glowsticks.

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Take that, meth labs!

Net cost with all the supplies for final assembly plus 38 glowsticks? About $580, almost all of it at either Home Depot or Kinko's (which you probably have near you as well.) One of the many surprises waiting for us in Atlanta? Our glowsticks had a 20% failure rate and thin wooden boards tend to warp quickly in the Southern humidity.

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