Posts tagged "cyclorama"

We have been a little slack of late and have not put any effort into finishing the Cyc Room. So we went off and brought some cheap white sealant/undercoat and a couple of rollers.

Painting in Progress

We put on 3 coats of White paint and wow it is really starting to look good. The quick pic I snapped with an iphone does not really do it justice. Almost tempted to leave it white and get out the camera for a few shoots.

Undercoat complete - ready for the Green

Tomorrow we will purchase the Green paint. So close now....

The steel pipe has been removed and we can now begin plastering. This required a forkflift

To fill in the gabs and staple gun holes in the cladding we just used quick dry filler and sanded it smooth.

For the curves we made up a concrete plaster mix and had to make a heap of batches using a wheelbarrow and shovel to mix it up. This stuff sets as hard as concrete so if we every get sick of Film we can use it as a skate bowl.

The first bit of plaster is down

It is actually a great consistency and very easy to spread and shape. The chicken wire holds / bonds to it easily and you can just use a long bit of wood and a trowel to smooth it out.

Trying to make things smooth

Because we raised out the bottom of the cladding 10 millimeters it was very easy to seamlessly connect the plaster to the cladding at the bottom of the curve.

The corners were a little harder a bit more of a mission to shape but we got there in the end.

Notice Barry is nowhere to be seen. Lets just say his smoothing left a lot to be desired.

We did the plastering over 2 days; The curves were done on the first day and left to dry and harden then the following day we plastered the floor.

Curves completed!

Plastering the floor; day 2.

Ready to paint

We also shaped an easy ramp up to the floor

Only painting to go – it’s hard to believe, but I think we are going to pull this off.

We could ignore it no longer; that annoying and very large steel pipe running through the center of our Room. Cladding has stalled and it must come down.

After careful deliberation over a few beers we decided to cut the pipe down in 2 sections.

We decided to cut right through the pipe at one end and then cut three quarters of the way through the middle, thus allowing us to bend the pipe down to a vertical position. One of us would then balance/hold the pipe, while the other one of us cut through the remaining steel, then quickly climb down from his ladder and help lower the section to the floor.... Sounded great in theory.

In reality what happened was this: the first cut went smoothly, the second cut was going well and we were able to lower/bend the pipe down to a hanging vertical. The part where I was then going to hold it while the last cut was made, that bit did not go quite to plan. Lets just say this thing was a little heavier then we thought and it simply crashed to the ground narrowly missing my bare feet (safety first) and taking a rather huge chunk out of our concrete floor.

Safety First: Protective footwear is important when using a grinder on steel

Oh well no one is hurt, lets move onto the last section. So the idea here was to do a similar thing, cut the section closest to the wall right through leaving the pipe hanging from a steel support bar – we then simply cut that and the pipe comes falling nicely down on some well positioned wooden pallets.

We hooked a tie down under the pipe and fastened it to one of the ceiling beams. This would allow us to sit on the pipe we were cutting. Probably not the smartest idea in the world, another “close call”. But believe it or not everything went to plan with this section and it landed nicely on the pallets.

Safety First: Not a Real Clever place to sit.

Obligatory Builders Crack Shot: Not a pretty sight, believe me.

We will have to call in a few people to help lift and carry the pipes out of the way. Job done! Now we can get back into cladding and get this room finished.

Steel Pipe is down: finally.

We were able to quickly get the rest of the cladding up and it makes the room look huge. We gaped out the bottom cladding 10 millimeters to allow us to easily plaster up to the bottom.

Next step is to plaster the bottom curves. We should be able to attack that tomorrow.

This is a brief post as we are now held up by a huge steel pipe running through the middle of our Cyc room, that has to be removed before we can do anymore

Cladding has begun - we used 3 mill MDF board as this was the cheapest option and is very easy to bend.

We found that it was very hard to counter sink screws into the MDF so opted to Glue and Staple the board to the framing.

We also decided to add a few more nogs in the framing to give the walls more strength, provide more gluing surface and minimize warping of the boards.

The Staples we used were very long and were fired via an air compressor so they sank in deep enough and we fired them in every couple of inches. This along with “liquid nails” glue should be fine.

Why we did not cut down that pipe at the very beginning I do not know. As I said in our very first post “I have a feeling this may come back to haunt us” now it is in the way and stopping us completing the cladding. It now needs to be removed without damaging the existing framing. We will be attempting to cut this down over the weekend and will update you all on our progress or subsequent disaster Monday morning.

I will apologies in advance for the no-doubt use of incorrect terminology and mathematical ignorance. If two people as mathematically challenged as Barry and I can build a Cyc room then so can you.

Instead of working out the pitch and radius of the curve or whatever other mathematical measurement was needed we jumped on the Pro-Cyc website and “borrowed” the measurements of one of their systems.

After looking at a few of their systems we decided on the following:

• Corner Module: 45° with a 3'6" radius
• Cove Modules: 3'6" radius x 4' wide

These measurements seemed optimal for lighting the corners and shooting multiple angles

We then scrounged up some old off cuts of plywood and cut out the curves; for the floor and the 2 corners.

As the corners have to be wider then the bottom cove we had cut out 2 lots of separate curves.

For the bottom of the corners we simply spaced out the bottom curved pieces and nailed one to every second post.

Now to save even more money we cut our spare 2x2 timber into 1x1 and used these to run horizontally between each of the curves and simply screwed them into place– thus creating the bottom cove, forming the basis of our curved wall.

To make the side/vertical curves we simply did the same process and nailed the boards vertically.

For the corner we just spaced out the bottom curves on the same radius and screwed them in place with a few off cuts.

The original plan was to bend timber around the curve. But after thinking that sounded a bit hard, we decided we would instead use plaster to create the bottom curves. So we simply stapled building paper and chicken wire around the bottom curve. This will provide a more then adequate base for the plaster.

We borrowed an old Staple Gun (with no safety) and Air compressor, to do the job. This thing had a heap of power and according to Barry it really hurts when you are shot with one.

This was far easier then expected. Stay tuned as we will soon be attempting cladding and plastering.