What's the big deal?

[urbanpreppie05]

Hello all-

I am producing a game show (again) at my University for our Programming organization. We are doing a show called "What's the Big Deal?" which is a combination of Let's Make a Deal, Double Dare, The Price is Right, and Beat The Clock. The school has given me a nice budget to work with again, and I need to use some of that for a set.
I need to build 3 curtains (doors would take too long) that stand at least 6'2 tall. But the thing is, I SEE how it will look in my head, but I don't know how to do it. (ie., I don't know what supplies to use, how to keep it all from falling apart, etc.)
So for advice, I turn to you, my fellow fanatics. Got any ideas?

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'urbanpreppie05\' date=\'Sep 20 2004, 09:36 PM\'] But the thing is, I SEE how it will look in my head, but I don't know how to do it. (ie., I don't know what supplies to use, how to keep it all from falling apart, etc.)
So for advice, I turn to you, my fellow fanatics. Got any ideas? [/quote]
 There's no magical "game show" answer, so the fact that we're fanatics has very little to do with it.  You do what any other producer would do:  Find yourself somebody who can build it for you.  A handyman, a carpenter, somebody in the school's shop class.  Check with the Theater Department, see what they do when they need a set.  Maybe you'll get lucky and get somebody who'll do it for the experience, maybe you'll have to use some of that budget to hire some expertise.

The one thing you DON'T want to do, unless you have the experience, is try and do it yourself.  Sure, new experiences are good for you and you'll never learn until you try (bla...bla...bla...) but if set building and design isn't something that interests you, chances are you'll sour yourself on the whole project by spending hours of toil and frustration on the part you don't care about.

[MSTieScott]

I did some game show productions when I was in college, and they didn't give me a budget. Therefore, I was left to come up with my own challenge called "How to Create a Passable Game Show Set for About $150."

Here's what I did for curtains, which were the backdrop for all sides of my set: I went to a department store and bought a bunch of dark blue bedsheets that were on sale. I had somebody open up the seam on one end to create a loop at the top of the bedsheets (or maybe they folded the bedsheets over to create a loop; I can't remember). I then bought some PVC pipe from the hardware store, as well as some long 2x4's. Oh, and some plastic loops to attach to the 2x4's. I cut and nailed the 2x4s together so that they would stand vertically about 7 feet high, attached the plastic loops to the tops of the 2x4's, threaded the PVC pipe through the bedsheets, then rested the ends of the pipe through the loops on the 2x4's. The bedsheets looked like curtains hanging down.

I imagine you could do something similar for curtains that have to open and close (perhaps splurge to get some rings to attach the sheets to so they easily slide across the pipe). Attach some fishing line to the end and pull... that should work, right? Though you'd want to secure everything better than I did -- while the set-up looked fine for the camera, it was also susceptible to falling down if somebody touched it.

--
Scott Robinson

(If you're wondering where the rest of the money went, the majority of it went into a 12'x13' piece of carpet. I thought a beige tile floor with tape marks on it would look kind of tacky.)

[tvmitch]

After doing a series of shows very similar to Password for Millersville University, I have one piece of advice:

Keep It Simple.

In the back of your head, keep that in mind all the time. The more complicated any element of shoestring-budget college television is, the worse it could turn out.

Now for the fun stuff I did!

I have a Powerbook, which I rigged up to use as a bonus round clock by finding an eggcrate font, typing in yellow, and making 60-some slides as a Powerpoint presentation to advance one second at a time. I had my director zoom in enough that no one could tell it was a Powerbook screen (LCD, no phase lines). It was very fun. I found myself just playing with it in class, changing the fonts to vein fonts, et cetera. Our computer lab had a bunch of Power Mac G4s with large flatscreen monitors, which would be just as effective or better, but they had alarms on them. I have this clock if anyone wants it - just email me at games at mitchgroff dot com.

For the words for Password, I created a CG that looked a lot like the Password Plus word block. I had wanted to set up two computers with flatscreen monitors for score displays, but this was too complicated (no one has two of the same monitor, and like I said, the monitors were under lockdown) so I had a guy who was very quick on our antiquated CG to change scores between words. When it worked, it worked very well.

I made a CD of downloaded Password sounds to use as sound effects. This did not work well, and won't work well unless you have someone dedicated to the CD player only and not messing with levels and whatnot. And the sound person must understand outright what cues you want to use in what situtation. Don't set a kid up on audio who's an idiot - this might be the most second most important job in the show. If your school has a hard disk sound system, congratulations. iTunes would work well too if it's hooked into your system. Even a CD player with 20 buttons that advanced to tracks 1-20 with a touch of the button didn't work because there was always about a half second delay.

All I know is that it was a lot of work. I produced, hosted, found contestants, wrote the words, put the words on cards...fun, but tiring. I had a lot of help, but no one had seen Password, so I couldn't tell them to "go write words." Hopefully anyone who tries this has a great bunch of willing kids to help.

[jrjgames]

Speaking from experience from building the Feud set, yes, get someone that knows what they are doing! It's worth the effort and any money it might cost you!

John

[urbanpreppie05]

UPDATE:

Thank you for your input! I talked with our student union tech guy, and he gave me a TON of advice for the set- and instead of using poles, let's just say we'll be using lots of plywood, paint and hinges.

More details soon!