"Newsies" at the Papermill Playhouse, New Jersey

In August 2011, Enhance a Colour was called upon by Hudson Scenic to help with the imagery in the production of “Newsies” at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. The issue was to place an image directly on Twin Wall material that would create translucent and transparent pieces. With our flat bed printers, routers, and a “day-night-day” process, our creative staff and production team were able to achieve such an effect.

“Day-night-day” is a process in which we print a layer of 4-color, a layer of white, and then a second layer of 4-color. Translucency and backlight ability are accomplished to give your images quality visibility when not lit and  vibrant rather than washed-out color when backlit. In this case, the images were printed first surface using UV inks to make the prints durable. An interesting challenge our creative staff and production crew met was to make the Ground Row Back Layer and the Ground Row Front Layer line up identically with the Side Wall Panels which were an abnormal size of 5’W x 12’H.

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Ground Row - Front Layer

Side Wall

Ground Row - Back Layer

Side Wall - Backlit

For printed pieces to be transparent yet translucent enough to shine a light source through it, we spot-printed a double strike of 4-color UV inks to the Twin Wall materials. In areas where the producers wanted the light to truly come through, there was no ink printed at all. A light spray of ink was used in areas where they wanted the Twin Wall to shine, but be somewhat opaque. Examples of this spot-print double strike process to attain this unique look are found in the Jacobi Windows and the Front Ground Row.

Jacobi Windows

Front Ground Row

In addition to printing the Twin Wall material, Enhance a Colour produced several other visuals. “The moon” was printed and finished using our 16ft dye-sublimated backlit artist fabric. We printed a number of other fabric panels to wrap flats. Lastly, for the main set we printed the image of a newspaper on our vinyl mesh/textilene so the light designer could shine images off of it.

"Newsies"

Fabric

“Newsies” had a successful run at the Papermill Playhouse from September 15^th to October 16^th. We thank Hudson Scenic for giving us the chance to assist them with their project. After reading this case study, we hope you will contact us to help you with your next project using all of our unique and custom services geared toward the scenic industry.

"Newsies"