Flats: Broadway and Hollywood/Two Dimensional Scenery

Broadway Flat

For more than two hundred years fabric-covered wooden-framed flats were the standard construction technique for making scenic walls The most important reason that soft flats have fallen into semi-disfavor is that contemporary scene designs tend to be more sculptural than pictorial What is the does Sculptural vs. Pictorial mean?

Metal Framed Flats

Metal framed flats are stronger and can be built to be longer with out seams Steel sticks of 1x1 sq tube steel usually can be purchased at 26' long. A steel flat can be fabric covered with some adjustments to be able to staple the fabric to some wood Steel flats are generally covered with luan. The luan is attached with screws or T-nails.

Fabrics for Broadway Flats

The best and most common fabrics for stage flats are muslin and canvas. Muslin is the most popular fabric for scenery flats, due to its light weight and soft texture. It's finely woven, affordable, and offered in versatile styles: Natural Muslin provides an ideal surface for painting. Flame Retardant Muslin can be lightly painted, or left unpainted. Flame Retardant Polyester Muslin is best-suited for humid environments. It's less stiff than cotton muslin and is durable enough for high-traffic stages. Canvas, while a little firmer and heavier than muslin, is also a great option for your flat because it can be easily stretched over frames and acts as a good base for paint. Extra Wide Canvas is a flame-retardant seamless canvas, making it a well-suited fabric for stage scenery. Colored Canvas can be used for color-block backgrounds. Duvitine/Comando Cloth can also be used to make a black wall for masking or part of a the design for the show.

Constructing a Broadway Flat

To create a stage flat, you'll need: Muslin or Canvas fabric Pine lumber for frame 1×2-inch (20 by 45 mm), 1×3-inch (20 by 65 mm) or 1×4-inch (20 by 90 mm) Luan plywood 1/4-inch (6 mm) or 1/8-inch (3 mm) Miter saw Jigsaw Staple gun Carpenters glue Hammer

corner brace

a diagonal internal framing member that helps keep a flat square

jog

a flat less that 2 feet wide

rail

a top or bottom framing member of a flat

stile

a verticle side member of a flat

toggle bar

an interior horizontal framing member of a flat

Soft Covered Flats

are broadway style flats covered with a fabric

Hard Covered Flats

are flats simply traditional wooded flat frames covered with a hard material such as luan, plywood, or hardbord(masonite)

rip

to saw parallel with the grain. ripping is generally done with a table saw

Hollywood Flats

(also called "TV" flats or "studio" flats) are rigidly constructed from luan or plywood. Using wall jacks, Hollywood flats can stand freely from the ground or anchored directly to a portable base. Construction of a Hollywood flat is simpler than a Broadway flat.

Broadway Flats

(also called "theatre", "standard" and "stage" flats) are constructed from muslin or stretched canvas applied to a thin wooden frame. Broadway flats are lighter than Hollywood flats and can be suspended from a fly tower.

What is a Flat in Theatre?

A theatre flat is a tool used in stage design to create depth and add visual interest. They consist of flat pieces of painted scenery, and thus are also referred to as "flats". Flats are positioned on stage as backgrounds or buildings.

Hollywood Flats

Also called studio flats, are broadway flats with one major exception: the framing material, usually 1x4 or 1x3, is placed "on edge" rather than flat. The studio flat is then covered with ¼" luan and attached using pneumatically driven, Narrow-crown staple on 12 to 18 inch centers