Flying on Tour

[davethetekkie]

OK, I've just been asked if it is possible to construct a portable flytower for use on a tour of smaller venues that are unlikely to have flying facilities... We wish to fly a wooden table and chair, both of which are used in the dance piece involved. This is far from being my area of expertise and I could really use some guidance.

 

Someone with sense please tell me to just steer clear!

[Ynot]

Hmm...

 

Possible? Possibly.

Practical? Possibly not...

 

Without knowing the venues you'll be touring to, if they have NO flying capacity at all, then there may well be a good reason for this - not least of all space.

I know that we have the capacity in OUR small stage space to work out some basic flown effects, but without the proper equipment and facilities much more than that would be discounted.

 

Personally I suspect you may well be biting off a bit you may not be able to chew...

[JDP]

OK> Portable fly towers ain't gonna happen. For two reasons, the first being size, weight and practicality and the second being price..

 

You could look at Kenesis or Cyberhoist motors which, providing you can put in points off the flying floor would be ideal. That would be most simple.

[pete LD]

Its not going to be possible to build a fly tower as that’s the bit above the stage where cloths disappear to and if that’s not there you cant just add it!. If you just want to fly the table a few feet off the floor this is easy, but you will need different solutions in each venue as small scale touring venues are very different to each other! you can make something up using rated pulleys and line that go from the wings, up to the grid and down on to your table. The venues will know the loadings for there lx bars and other rigging points. Just tour enough stuff for different venues!

If you want to fly the table out of sight, you can't!

Pete

[andy_s]

OK> Portable fly towers ain't gonna happen. For two reasons, the first being size, weight and practicality and the second being price..

 

You could look at Kenesis or Cyberhoist motors which, providing you can put in points off the flying floor would be ideal. That would be most simple.

 

probably agree about portable fly tower in the accepted sense of the word, but I know of places with demountable flying systems - eg Brighton Corn Exchange has a ground supported truss structure with a grid and a bolt-on fly floor giving you a moveable hemp-house. not full height flying, but....

 

and I think there was a conversion done a while back in the RFH when it was hosting a ballet company to give temporary flying facilities suitable for ballet performances.

 

and there are also the shows that take their own counterweight sets around with them, to ensure consistency in each venue - AMP's "The Carman" being one, and I recall an Eddie Izzard show in the nineties which involved a toured counterweight set on which his throne was raised and lowered for his grand entrance. can't remember too many details, but the set was a giant open book standing on it's end...this was a touring version of his west-end show, which I believe had a different but equally spectacular grand entrance.

 

and on a smaller scale, I worked on a tour which had a counterweight set built in to the set to facilitate a poltergheist / flying chair gag - this was a show touring one-night stands in small to mid scale theatres, and also did a month at Edinburgh fringe with half-hour turnrounds, so it doesn't have to be huge and unwieldy - the solution depends on the size of the problem, so to speak. As someone else has said, lifting them up is relatively easy, making them disappear from view will be harder, if this is the important bit, then flying may not be the answer in this situation.

[Suzette]

Although davethetekkie said he just needed to fly a table and chair -- an average table is approx 2'6" high and average chair no more than 3' (usually less) -- if it can fly behind a 6' deep border - Voila!

Obviously he's still got to work out how to get it up there but hiding them does have a solution ....

[ImagineerTom]

Define "fly" in relation to this table and chair.

 

Do they have to fly with performers on or just "float" as props up and down from the roof?

 

Do they have to be seen to go up out of sight or just a small movement on within the proscenium space?

 

Do they have to be "flown" by wires or could another lift mechanism be used?

 

Freestanding flytowers and sub grids (aka portable conterweight fly grids) are suprisingly common and almost available off the shelf as they are used in #1 musical tours to help eliminate the variations between venues; however they are expensive, tend to require a lorry of their own just for transportation and as others have pointed out you need to have the physical space within the venue for the system. As a rule if a venue has SPACE for a flytower they will have a working flytower. If they have rigging points / loadbaring grid then they will have systems there - thus if you're going to spaces that DON'T have these resources it's probably not going to be (financially viably) possible to take your own virtual grid (in the conventional description) to slot in.

[JDP]

Agreed with Suzette. With all due respect Ynot and Andy_S, with the right money in place, anything can be done.

 

I have never seen a fly floor made portable, but I have done some very big tours where we have had catwalks in the roof for access... In fact Peter Gabriel had the dimmers on catwalks in the air!

 

There would be no logical reason why the poser couldn't have his fly floor made, providing he had the budget in place. It would probably be a custom build, and you would need a roof that could take the weight.

 

Nothing is impossible, take the Rolling Stones, Genesis, Kylie Show Girl, Beijing Olympics, Chitty in the West End etc etc all as classic examples of this. OK these systems cost several hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds, to produce, but the op hasn't said the budget is £2.50, yet....

 

Tom, you COULD do a ground supported system, but if the stage is 20M wide by 12M (a 60' x 40') then there would be issues supporting the width of it, as you can't have supports in the middle of stage at the front. Brixton is bad enough where the front truss is 40' on 2 motors at the far end, that can cause sag!

[pete LD]

a portable flytower for use on a tour of smaller venues that are unlikely to have flying facilities...

 

I saw this as small studio spaces, 100 or 200 seats, the kind small scale dance tours go to. Low grids, no load points etc etc. I agree anything is possible with the money etc I just didnt see this was one of them moments....

Feel free to correct me!

Pete

[GRisdale]

It would seem to me that building a fly-tower or similar for the sake of a table and a chair is a bit excessive... Assuming by "smaller venues" you mean small scale receiving houses, I think it would be fair enough to assume that some LX bars will be available with a least some capacity for load - if needs be you could have the table and chair made to be especially light.

 

After that, some black rope and pulleys, perhaps with some small sandbags or some such for counterweight, is not really rocket science, and certainly a lot less hassle than trying to build a theatre in the theatre...(?) If your budget does extend beyond a good box of Flints hardware you could look at something like these.

 

If there's no space to fly it out to, either a border as suggested or a BWS "box" to receive the set in the roof would at least disguise what it is...

 

Gareth.

[Ynot]

Agreed with Suzette. With all due respect Ynot and Andy_S, with the right money in place, anything can be done.

Several people are talking here about solutions for larger scale operations, and I sense that behind the OP is a very limited budget.

....on a tour of smaller venues that are unlikely to have flying facilities...

That to me doesn't say 'right money'.

 

The original question was

...it is possible to construct a portable flytower ...

I stand by my answer - possible - yes. Practical, possibly not.

 

There could be alternatives, as has been suggested, but without further input it's hard to advise further.

 

Of course anything IS possible with money (within reason) but unless the OP comes back with a decent sized wedge to back up the operation, I think he's going to have to fall back on the answer he was hoping to get which is 'steer clear'.

[Roderick]

OzOpera, the 'studio' company of Opera Australia, recently toured their version of Madame Butterfly through regional centres with a 12m x 12m ground support system.

Most of the venues they visited were sports halls or community halls without any flying possibilities, this solution gave them the consistency required for a small touring show. But bear in mind the whole design was based on this set-up.

So yes, it can be done, even on a low budget, but it will require some planning from the start.

[andy_s]

Agreed with Suzette. With all due respect Ynot and Andy_S, with the right money in place, anything can be done.

 

I have never seen a fly floor made portable, but I have done some very big tours where we have had catwalks in the roof for access... In fact Peter Gabriel had the dimmers on catwalks in the air!

 

sorry, I think perhaps the point of my post wasn't clear enough - as well as talking about the big money stuff, I also referred to a small show with flying facilities built-in - the budget for this was well under 10K for the whole production (set, costume, sound, props, fx, etcetera) for a 6 month tour. This is personal experience - I did that 6 month tour.

 

I was trying to suggest that it was the tower that would be a problem - if what is meant by "tower" is "hidden space above the stage into which scenery / props can be "flown" in order to conceal them from the audience".

 

this I guess would indeed be very impractical in most small-scale venues, and short of cutting a hole in the ceiling, I can't really think of a way. but if concealment isn't the issue, then there are a number of different ways of solving the flying problem, not necessarily all dependant on high budgets, but clearly all requiring access to a little specialist advice / knowledge, and high safety awareness.

 

If you get the chance to look at the demountable flyfloor at Brighton Corn Exchange (part of the Dome complex), it's worth a look. Not truly portable I suppose without some modification and some very big lorries, but it's a very long room, so they break down the structure and reset it in I think three different positions along the room, to give increased audience capacity - for a theatre show, there is a seating rake for about 350, I think, for a concert, there are two other positions which give more seating space on the flat in front of the rake. So they literally pick up the stagehouse, including flying grid, and move it to a new position.

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

Although davethetekkie said he just needed to fly a table and chair -- an average table is approx 2'6" high and average chair no more than 3' (usually less) -- if it can fly behind a 6' deep border - Voila!

Obviously he's still got to work out how to get it up there but hiding them does have a solution ....

still a bit dependant on circumstance - I've played plenty of small scale venues where the grid is not much more than 12' high...so 6' border might be a bit too deep.

 

but I agree that the solution to the problem lies in a bit of lateral thinking...

 

Mods - not sure how to combine two quotes / replies in one post - please adjust if you think it's necessary. (edit) Oh - it's done it automatically. How clever....

[Albatross]

OzOpera, the 'studio' company of Opera Australia, recently toured their version of Madame Butterfly through regional centres with a 12m x 12m ground support system.

Most of the venues they visited were sports halls or community halls without any flying possibilities, this solution gave them the consistency required for a small touring show. But bear in mind the whole design was based on this set-up.

So yes, it can be done, even on a low budget, but it will require some planning from the start.

 

Being at a Theatre where they came in, we had to use THEIR system on the stage, even though we have a full fly tower system. It was self contained truss tower system specifically to hang their lights, rear curtain & a running track door. There was no possibility of using our inhouse system at all, even though it would have been faster, cheaper & would have looked better...

With 10 crew it took 10 hours to setup, and 7 to bump out for a 1.5 hr performance. Their crew had a 22 hour day, some of hour crew ( myself included) had a 20 hour day.

 

...in short it was a great concept, but badly executed.

[Chris Higgs]

Davethetekkie

 

Steer clear.

Truck them on.