Our friends at Jubba ask us to help them create a pop-up Mardi Gras party for the well-known whisky brand, Southern Comfort. Jubba wanted to create a scene taken straight from the streets of New Orleans and placed into the arches of Leake Street, London.
We took on an existing set that required fixing, repainting and rebuilding and brought it back to life. This meant there was quite a bit of pre-production work in our warehouse before the set was ready for installation. Much of the print for the event also required replacing throughout the event, including signage, posters, and disclaimer signs. All of which we prepped, collated and printed.
Touch-up work on tram by scenic painters
Repair work on tram
Scenically painted tram wheel
Purple shutters and yellow panelling drying
Yellow shutters and window frames drying
Painting of red window frames
Set being installed on-site
WELCOME TO NEW ORLEANS
The street scene includes a variety of walls, windows, shutters, doors, and balustrades. All painted a crazy concoction of bright colours to help bring a Mardi Gras feel to some train arches in London. Much of the set required sprucing up, so we had a team of painters and carpenters working on the existing pieces to bring them back up to scratch.
ALL ABOARD
No party is complete until there is a bar; or two in this case! One of the bars at this party was situated in a custom-built tram, which prior to the event, required a complete reconstruction. Our team of scenic carpenters and painters worked on replacing, rebuilding and repainting parts of the tram to turn it back into a usable bar. We remade and painted the tram wheels to give the wood a rusty appearance as if they were made of cast iron.
IT’S ALL IN THE DETAILS
The gold bar was much simpler in design, made using existing gold panels with a brick detailing for which we built a new timber frame. We hung our ‘BAR’ sign above the gold bar as a finishing touch.
LIGHT IT UP
To top it off, we fitted various lighting throughout the event. This included LED festoon strung across the street set, generic LED wash lighting for the street scenery and small low voltage lighting for details such as the tram, the bars and the windows.
Working with an existing set built by someone else is always likely to bring up some challenges— differences in design ideas or quality of a build. We’re always up for a challenge, so we aren’t phased by unexpected work to create something to our ideal standards.
