Massive Shower Curtain

[wilbourne]

I've been briefed to provde two huge shower curtains as an act drop for a show in the next few months; ten and a half metres by five and a half metres each. It needs to be opaque but translucent enough to see shapes on stage behind it and it will be about 2m away from the front row of audience so has to look the part.

Any ideas? I'm sure this has been done before, can you get plastic cyc material that will act like this? (it has to get wet too)

[Chas at Halls]

Try our old friends at Harkness Screens - info@harknesshall.com - they can weld massive sheet sizes and you can specify what colour & how opaque you want it to be...!

[videogod]

Also check out rose brand in NY, they made me similar sheets a few years back for an awards show set.

[andy_s]

Gerriets are also good for screens / plastics.

[shadaca]

How are you doing with this?

 

It just occured to me that we had a whole lot of lightable shower cutain when we did Corialanus a couple of years back.

don't know what happened to it, and its a bit blood smattered *don't ask* but its prolly somewhere in the caves of beyond.

I shall also try and find our suppliers for you, I don't remember it being that expensive either.

[wilbourne]

Folks,

Thanks for all the help on this, I've been exploring all these ideas and some others over the last week or so. It's looking like huge cost is going to be unavoidable. The designer has settled on a clear plastic so another issue is the weight of the thing; will it be able to bunch up at the end of the track when opened and will it all stick together if it does... Urgh!

Funny just how much you can grow to hate an inanimate object before you've even met it.

Shadaca, was your curtain cloth or plastic?

(worth noting that the director is talking of blood and lots of it...)

 

Wilb.

[andy_s]

for a large pair of curtains the full width of the stage we used a product called "Glassclear" or "Clearglass" (I can never remember which way round), supplied by Gerriets (as mentioned above. it's very transparant, but can be painted using acrylic paints like rosco broadway, it comes in rolls about 1400mm wide but can be welded into bigger panels and eyelets added by gerriets as required, it costs about £7 a metre unmade-up (obviously there would be a make up charge) and best of all it is inherently flame retardant. I couldn't find the product on their website (hence my uncertainty about the name of it), but ring Gerriets on 020 7639 7704, they are very helpful.

 

it is quite heavy, but probably not as heavy as the equivalent cloth tabs, and we didn't have any problems with it bunching up and sticking to itself, although of course any large curtain will make quite a big lump at the end of the curtain track, so if this is a visual / aesthetic issue, you need to make sure the track is long enough to get the curtain offstage. We used standard triple E track and runners.

 

I dare say there are other manufacturers who have similar products, but I haven't been able to find them.

[shadaca]

Shadaca, was your curtain cloth or plastic?

 

It was plastic, and wipedownable (If thats a word) which was great.

 

I'm going to pm you with the designers details, she will have details of where we got it.

[mcnallca]

So time to dig up an old thread, I'm on the hunt for somthing similar to the posts above but rather than clear I was hoping that it it would be relatively transparent but have a diffusing effect similar to L132 it doesnt need to be as huge an area as the op here wanted but needs to come in lengths of up to 7m by 1.25m (oh and flame retardancy is a must have attribute). Using L132 is not a runner as it just is not robust enough as this will be part of a (hopefully) flying set piece which actors will be touching quite a bit.

 

Thanks

 

Colm

[andy_s]

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer in respect of glassclear from Gerriets - rolls are 1.4m wide (if I rightly recall), it's clear and flame retardant. to get a frost like effect you would need to spraypaint with a light dusting of white or light grey until you get the opacity you want.

 

It would be worth asking Gerriets if there is a frosted version available, as it would save you a paint job, but I haven't come across one myself.

 

Another possibility might be to research companies which supply the sheets of plastic that are used to shroud scaffolding and building sites, which are pretty opaque, and I believe are flame retardant to meet h&s requirements on building sites. they come in huge quantities - I ordered 150 metres of reinforced plastic sheeting from a company in manchester and they laughed at me - they said they usually sell it by the mile...I'm afraid this was some years ago and I no longer have the reference, but it shouldn't be too difficult to research...

[themadhippy]

but have a diffusing effect similar to L132

wot medium blue? thinks ya mean #132

[mcnallca]

#132 it is, will look into the builders plastic have good contacts with a local builders suppliers so I'll ask there.

 

Thanks all