Completed Flats: Teach Em' a Lesson

With the design hand painted on by the design team, the 'Teach Em' A Lesson' flats are complete.

Recap: The design team decided to suggest changing the Victorian school house concept to a simpler, but very effective 'chalkboard' drawn backdrop. This meant less time spent sourcing, buying or building things for us, but the production students still got the immediately recognisable school environment that they desired.

Oversized chalkboard props.

 Chalkboards x2 were requested as part of the school themed oversized props for a game planned to be in the 'Teach Em' A Lesson' gameshow.
As these are props I knew I could get done in a day and to a good standard, I opted to the this mini-project on solo, especially at this point the deadline was quite close. Getting props done efficiently without lacking in quality or safety was priority.
To the left shows the measurements on a piece of MDF for the chalkboard and the borders.

 Once cut out on a bandsaw, the separate pieces were painted. For the grey chalkboard base I made sure to use the same paint that was being used for the set itself, so the colours would match up. These were then left to dry, but as MDF is quite porous this didn't take long.

Once all dry, washes were brushed over the borders and then a rocker was used to create a 'grain' through them, emulating real wood planks. The pieces were stuck together with wood glue and left to dry, then the corners were rounded by eye on a belt sander.

 

 The finishing touches included making the chalkboards look used by drawing on them in actual chalk. A glaze could then have been brushed over to stop the chalk from rubbing off but I went without in case the Production students would prefer them to be blank or have a different image on them, in which case the chalk can simply be rubbed off. The backs and sides were also painted as I realised these props would be getting picked up and moved, so the front wouldn't be the only angle getting seen, so every angle was covered and patterns just incase.

Preparing Flats: 'Teach Em' A Lesson'.

As I was filling a support role in this project I focused mainly on preparing the old flats for refurbishment. This would mean that by the time the main design team had finalised their plans, the flats would be ready to be painted and have the designs transferred to them. Myself and Mel used a corded hand sander to remove all of the thick, dried paint, else the paper laid down with wallpaper paste would be uneven.

Leigh and I then spent a few evenings wallpapering the smoothed flats with paper and till roll. Under our supervisor, Bruce's advice, he suggested that till roll would neaten the edges that had to be cut when the flats had to be disassembled to be transported to the TV Studios.

The wallpaper itself was used to paint the design over, rather than paint straight onto a second hand flat that had a variety of paints and textures on them already. This was altogether a quicker and neater method.

Photos taken by Carmela McCarthy, Leigh Osbourne and myself.