Scenic | ARTS Production Services in Central Ohio

Wedding Special Effects, Lighting, & Projection

Posted on April 11, 2014 by ARTS

Columbus Ohio Wedding Special Effects, Lighting, & Projection ARTS provides a number of wedding production services, ranging from up-lighting and effects lighting to sound reinforcement for ceremonies and receptions, we provide various effects such as bubble machines and confetti cannons, we even offer a package where guests can take photos at your reception with digital cameras and the photos will be displayed in real-time in a slideshow on a projection screen.

Our special effects, event lighting, and projection services include:

Streamer & Confetti Cannons
Haze and Low-Lying Fog
Dance Lighting with Moving Lights
Up-Lighting on the Venue Walls
Projection of Monograms & Gobos
Video Projection on Venue Ceilings & Walls
Video Presentation Projection on Projection Screens

Making your wedding day a memorable one is of prime importance to us. We work with brides and grooms to provide creative solutions to make their wedding unique. Our team has a vast amount of experience in audio, lighting, and video production and can implement that experience in context of your special day.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Gallery Players Presents The Producers, ARTS Provides Video Production

Posted on March 1, 2014 by ARTS

The Producers is a musical adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan from Brooks’ 1968 film of the same name, with lyrics written by Brooks and music composed by Brooks and arranged by Glen Kelly and Doug Besterman. As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop. The humor of the show draws on ridiculous accents, characters of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business in-jokes. After 33 previews, the original Broadway production opened at the St. James Theatre on April 19, 2001, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and ran for 2,502 performances, winning a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards. It spawned a successful London production running for just over two years, US national tours, many productions worldwide and a 2005 film version.

Gallery Players, the longest running community theatre in the Midwest, presents a season lineup highlighting the Jewish experience and work by Jewish playwrights. This season includes three weekends of performances of The Producers, the first three weekends of March.

ARTS provided video production services to Gallery Players for their production of The Producers. We created a rig to mount a Canon DSLR from about 20′ high in their stage house to be aimed at down at the stage. The camera recorded a dance sequence that we then brought back to our office and edited. We provided the final edit to the team at Gallery Players, which they incorporated into their video projection cues for the show. The video is projected onto the cyc at the back of the stage during a shtick during a scene in the show.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Factory Tour of Stagemaker

Posted on December 27, 2013 by ARTS

Stagemaker Tour Today a few of us visited R&M Materials Handling, the manufacturer of Stagemaker Concert Hoists, in Springfield, Ohio. A buddy who works for another production company, that recently purchased a couple dozen Stagemakers, hooked us up with a factory tour.

Stagemaker concert hoists are designed to handle stage and theatrical equipment and enable the safe and accurate positioning of speakers, lighting systems, stage sets, and sceneries. Its low weight makes it ideal for touring events. Its compact size permits it to fit inside truss structures. Its quietness makes it ideal for operation during performances, even in theaters.

There’s so many advantages with Stagemaker motors: compact design for better space utilization on stage in trusses and on the truck, it’s quiet operation of less than 75dB allows it to be used during performances, 5-pocket load wheel (six on SM16) provides exceptionally smooth operation and reduced chain wear, its increased safety with combined torque limiting device/brake, its hoist housing is made of injection-cast aluminum which makes it really light, it uses black lifting chain, it ejects chain out the side to make it easier to invert the motor, and it even has ergonomic handles for easy transportation. There’s not much they’ve missed on this one, except for maybe being able to make me a sandwich

ARTS isn’t in the market for hoists yet, but when the time does come, we’re pretty positive that we’ll be going with Stagemaker.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

KaLightoscope Christmas, Louisville, Kentucky

Posted on November 15, 2013 by ARTS

KaLightoscope was an Axxis Inc production.

Christmas at the Galt House Hotel is so spectacular, it’s featured on the Travel Channel’s Christmas Crazy special. The event is fast becoming an annual tradition for families across the U.S. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Christmas at the Galt House Hotel will get your family in the holiday spirit! KaLightoscope Luminaries are handcrafted sculpted works of art made by Chinese artisans.

Axxis Inc is the cornerstone of the project. The Louisville production company provides the tent, staging, truss, lighting and audio gear, and the majority of the labor to implement this huge show.

KaLightoscope is an indoor winter wonderland that is housed in a Creative Tent Shasta Shelter FTS100 85’x160′ structure with 13k+ square feet of Staging Concepts and Granite Industries deck flooring. Over 700 feet of 12″ truss was suspended by 27 SR5 Stage Maker chain motors and hundreds of rigging points with thousands of feet of rigging cable. Thousands of feet of electrical cable powered the hundreds of lighting instruments and luminaries.

ARTS Owner, Robert Vance, spent nearly a month, beginning in mid-October, down in Louisville working for Axxis Inc, hands-on, during the installation of the temporary tent structure, staging, rigging, truss structure, electrical, and the final setup of the luminaries.

Here’s a video from The Galt House that’s about Christmas at The Galt House.

Here’s a video from Stage Maker that shows the use of their chain motors for this project.

For more information about this and the many other awesome projects around the country that Axxis Inc is working on, please visit their website.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Retirement Celebration Event

Posted on June 3, 2012 by ARTS

ARTS Production Services Event Production in Central Ohio We do events. This most recent event was a retirement celebration. Lighting, sound, audiovisual, the entire package. You could call our company an event planning company, we really can support every aspect of an event.

This particular event required a variety of lighting needs. We had some general mood lighting, some accent lighting, and for one schtick during the event we even had some intelligent lighting setup for some special effects. Additionally, we provided sound reinforcement; podium speaking, vocal performance, etc. We also took care of the video projection needs.

Not only did we supply audiovisual services, we provided pre and post video production services. Prior to the event, we created video presentation pieces for the event. Additionally, the event was shot using five HD cameras, one of which was using a steady cam rig.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Little Shop of Horrors, Local High School Musical

Posted on October 21, 2011 by ARTS

Little Shop of Horrors, Local High School Musical ARTS has a wide variety of experience, so does it’s team members. Robert Vance, ARTS Owner, has a wide range of experience in theatrical settings, including audio, lighting, and scenic design for high school theatrical productions. A local high school presented a fall musical, Little Shop of Horrors, and Robert provided audio, lighting, and scenic design for the production.

Little Shop of Horrors is a comedy horror rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman. The music, composed by Menken in the style of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes several well-known tunes, including the title song, “Skid Row (Downtown)”, “Somewhere That’s Green”, and “Suddenly, Seymour”.

In addition to the original long-running 1982 off-Broadway production and subsequent Broadway production, the musical has been performed all over the world. Because of its small cast and relatively simple orchestrations, it has become popular with community theatre, school and other amateur groups.

The scenic elements of the show included several locations, but mainly took place in the florist shop seen in this photo. Other locations included Skidrow (outside the shop) and a dentist office. At the end of the show, when the plant has taken over the world, vines with leaves and flowers were rigged to fall from above the stage and audience during the song “Don’t Feed the Plants”.

The main character of the show, a plant that’s cross between a Venus flytrap and an avocado, Audrey II, seen in this photo, is actually four puppets of different size throughout the show. The puppets used in this production came from the Monkey boys, out of Pennsylvania. The largest of the puppets was about the size of a small car.

In this production, the small orchestra was staged behind the set. A brick wall was flown behind the shop and could be seen through the shop window. During curtain call of the show, the wall flew out and the orchestra was included in curtain call. The orchestra being located behind the set complicated some things as far as conducting and audio. So the entire orchestra was miced and mixed separately for the audience and the performers on stage. The orchestra was able to hear the performers through a series of monitors. All of the performers were miced wirelessly. Additionally, the conductor was visible to the performers via camera and an on-stage monitor, and the performers were visible to the conductor likewise.

In addition to scenic and audio design, Robert provided lighting design expertise for the show. The design included rock-and-roll style lighting with vivid color washes from side and back PAR lighting and included a handful of intelligent lighting fixtures.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

The Guys, Local 9/11 Play

Posted on September 7, 2011 by ARTS

The Guys, Local 9/11 Play 9/11 is a sensitive topic any time, but especially on the yearly anniversary of the tragic event. You can imagine how emotional the subject could have been on the tenth anniversary. A local high school theatre troupe was determined to honor the memory of those lost in the event and commemorate those who survived by presenting a play to the community and to local firefighters and police officers who were invited to the performance.

In the play, The Guys, Joan, an editor, helps Nick, an FDNY captain, prepare the eulogies for an unprecedented number of firefighters who died under his command that day. The play debuted off-Broadway at The Flea Theater on December 4, 2001, directed by Jim Simpson and starring Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray.

Since 2001, The Guys has been presented in 48 US states and in the Czech Republic, Argentina, Japan, Italy and Poland. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon presented it at the Edinburgh Festival. It enjoyed a commemorative rerun at the Flea Theater in 2006 on the 5th anniversary of 9/11.

Robert Vance, ARTS Owner, provided scenic, audio, and lighting design for the local production of the play. The designs were minimal, because the play was very intimate, only takes place in one location, and the focus is entirely on the two characters. However minimal, the audio and lighting added a striking, emotional final moments of the production.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Oklahoma!, Local High School Musical

Posted on April 13, 2011 by ARTS

Oklahoma! is the first musical written by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs‘ 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance with farm girl Laurey Williams. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie.

The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box-office smash and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Academy Award-winning 1955 film adaptation. It has long been a popular choice for school and community productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.

Robert Vance, ARTS Owner, worked with a local high school theatre troupe on their production of Oklahoma! by providing audio, lighting, and scenic design. Robert has extensive experience working in theatrical settings and often works in the school theatre environment. This particular production involved various scenic location pieces, hundreds of conventional lighting fixtures, and the principal vocalists being wirelessly miced.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

James and the Giant Peach, Local High School Play

Posted on January 15, 2011 by ARTS

James and the Giant Peach, Local High School Play James and the Giant Peach is a popular children’s novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl, same guy who came up with Willy Wonka. The original first edition published by Alfred Knopf featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. However, there have been various reillustrated versions of it over the years. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996. The plot centers on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with six magically-altered garden bugs he meets. Originally titled James and the Giant Cherry, Dahl changed it to James and the Giant Peach because a peach is “prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry.”

Robert Vance, ARTS Owner, worked with a local high school theatre troupe on their production of this play by providing his lighting, audio, and scenic expertise. Robert has been working in the theatrical setting for numerous years and worked with a number of high school level theatrical productions in the past.

This production included a number of sound effects and atmospheric sounds – Birds flying over head, the ocean, etc. The lighting included effects, such as lighting, ocean, etc. There were a number of scenic elements that were achieved through some puppetry – Birds flying, a plane flyby, the Empire State Building appearing out of nowhere, etc. There were other larger-than-life scenic elements – the big peach, a two story silhouette of a house, a giant silhouette of the house on a hill, etc.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Rumors, Local High School Play

Posted on October 6, 2010 by ARTS

Rumors, Local High School Play Rumors opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on November 17, 1988and transferred to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre where it closed after 535 performances and eight previews. Directed by Gene Saks, the original cast included Lisa Banes, Christine Baranski, Andre Gregory, Ken Howard, Ron Leibman, Joyce Van Patten, and Jessica Walter. The song “La Bamba” was required to be used in the play. Baranski won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play,and Joseph G. Aulisi was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design.

The play starts with Ken Gorman and his wife, Chris Gorman at the 10th anniversary party of Charlie Brock, the Deputy Mayor of New York, and his wife, Myra. Unfortunately, things are not going quite to plan. All the kitchen staff is gone, Myra is missing, and Charlie has shot himself in the head. Chris calls Charlie’s doctor, but before Chris can tell him what has happened, Ken dictates that she not inform the doctor of anything that has happened, for the bullet only went through Charlie’s ear lobe. It appeared that he had taken some Valium, and was falling asleep as he fired the gun, managing to miss his head. It all goes downhill from there in this farcical play by Neil Simon.

ARTS Owner, Robert Vance, provided the local high school theatre troupe with his scenic, lighting, and audio design expertise. The set included a two-story home with a number of doorways – Neil Simon comedies always have doors! There were sound effects throughout the play, including live gun shots. Special effects lighting included a car pulling up to the house and its lights been seen through the window, police lights through the same window, etc.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Wizard of Oz, High School Musical in Central Ohio

Posted on May 2, 2010 by ARTS

ARTS Owner, Robert Vance, worked with a local high school in conjunction with their spring musical, Wizard of Oz. ARTS has worked with various high schools over the years on various theatrical productions. With this particular production, Robert provided his expertise in effects flying.

There are a number of flying effects sequences in the Wizzard of Oz; the tornado flying through Kansas, the Wicked Witch flying on her broomstick, Glinda flying in her bubble, the Flying Monkeys throughout the show, the Wizard flying away in his balloon at the end of the show, etc.

ZFX Flying Effects, out of Kentucky, provided all of the hardware and training for the effects. Having worked with ZFX on a number of other projects, Robert assisted with the rigging and installation of the equipment, worked with students to perfect the choreography, supervised the safe operation of the equipment, and supervised the load-out and return shipment of all of the gear.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Diviners Audio, Lighting, and Scenic Design

Posted on April 13, 2010 by ARTS

Robert Vance, ARTS Owner, provided a local high school his expertise in theatrical production by creating audio, lighting, and scenic design plans for their stage production of The Diviners.

The Diviners is a play by Jim Leonard, Jr. It takes place in the fictional town of Zion, Indiana during the 1930s/Great Depression era. The play begins and ends with elegies spoken by two of the townspeople describing what happened the day of Buddy’s tragedy. The body of the play is the memory of the time leading to the climatic event. Buddy is searching (divining) for water for local farmer, Basil. Luella, Basil’s wife, refuses to believe that the boy can find water.

The high school auditorium seats nearly a thousand and the design had to take that into consideration, keeping a very emotional, intimate play feeling like a very emotional, intimate play in a large, non-intimate venue.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Willy Wonka, Theatrical Support for a Local High School Musical

Posted on March 2, 2010 by ARTS

Willy Wonka, Scenic, Lighting, and Audio Design

Photo of the tech students in Willy Wonka’s Wonkavator.

As an actor, how cool would it be to fly on stage?!?! That’s right, fly! Like Peter Pan, only without all the pixy dust and silly green uniform. Well, ARTS Owner, Robert Vance, helped one local high school theatre do just that for their musical production of Willy Wonka.

Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka is a musical play that combines elements of both Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and of the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with newly created material. The play has several versions: the original version which premiered in 2004, the Junior version, the Kids version, and the Theatre for Young Audiences version. All are owned by Music Theatre International, the company that owns the Willy Wonka license. The original version has several instances where characters fly during the show. The Wonkavator, for instance, is an elevator that magically levitates and travels people throughout Willy Wonka’s factory. Another instance is when Charlie and Grandpa Joe drink one of Willy Wonka’s new potions that makes your body lighter than air. There were also several other scenes with flying characters.

Robert worked with ZFX Flying Effects, out of Kentucky, who provided the hardware and training to achieve the flying effects. ZFX is a complete service provider for all flying effects, offering expert pre-production advice, custom built equipment, skilled and safe installation, effective choreography and experienced flying performers.

Incidentally, Robert also provided his audio, lighting, and scenic design know-how for the production.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Scenic, Lighting, and Audio Design for Sylvia, Play

Posted on November 20, 2009 by ARTS

Robert Vance Lighting Design for Hilliard Bradley Play Sylvia Sylvia is a play about a dog, the couple who adopts her, and the drama that results. It was written by A. R. Gurney and first produced in 1995.

Middle-aged, upper-middle class Greg finds Sylvia, a dog played by a human, in the park and takes a liking to her. He brings her back to the empty nest he shares with Kate. When Kate gets home, she reacts very negatively to Sylvia and wants her gone. They eventually decide that Sylvia will stay for a few days before they decide whether she can stay longer, but Greg and Sylvia have already bonded. It goes down hill from there.

ARTS owner is working with Hilliard Bradley High School Theatre Department with their first play as the school opens for its first school year since being built. He will be collaborating with the theatre department’s director and create the scenic, lighting, and audio design.

With our extensive scenic, lighting, and audio production experience, ARTS envisions being able to provide support like this to other local high school theatre departments.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!

Theatrical Support in Hilliard

Posted on August 31, 2009 by ARTS

ARTS Production Services in Central Ohio Robert Nelson Vance, owner of ARTS, worked with Hilliard City Schools in an effort to open Hilliard Bradley High School Performing Arts Center at their new high school. This included ordering and installing equipment, inventorying items on construction specification sheets, creating cut sheets for contractors to complete work in the facility, etc.

The culmination of all this work was the Dedication Ceremony for the new school. The ceremony included instrumental and vocal performances by Bradley students and the guest speaker for the evening was our own Governor Ted Strickland who praised the community on their financial support of the facility and spoke of how the building is environmentally-friendly and technologically equipped for the 21st century.

Contact ARTS and receive a complete, same-day, no-obligation quotation for your event production project, 1-877-768-2623!