Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610353
54 P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5 In the pit below the stage, set amongst enormous archaic elevator screws used to raise and lower the stage floor, we placed "the nest." This was the nexus of off-stage computers that supported the product launch on stage. This messy but necessary tangle of monitors, wires, cable and electronic gear, all manned by harried engineers, belied the message presented on stage—the simplicity of personal computing. Top: The final dressing room design in the San Francisco Opera House for Act 2. Director Danny Boyle often referred to this as the Revenge Act. Inset: The raw dressing room as it was found. seen, richly enticing backstage world of the theater. Blood-red paint was applied liberally, along with the occasional highlight of red neon. Graphic Designer Emily Rolph designed super graphics specifically for the venue, utilizing archival San Francisco Ballet images. The effect was a vivid backdrop for a constantly moving camera and actors. Steadicam takes of 3–5 minutes in length were the norm. If the stage was the public face of the product launch's debut, then Steve Jobs' dressing room was its nerve center and inner sanctum. His dressing room would have been an obvious choice to build on stage were it not for Danny Boyle's requirement that it be physically contiguous with the rest of the venue. This forced the revamp of a rather dull dressing room into an environment appropriate for a wide range of dramatic scenes: equal parts war room, king's court and sanctuary. Guy's design for the dressing room presented an opportunity to distill the rich visual history of the Opera House and its legion of performers into a space of intimate familiarity and contemporary intrigue. Set decorator Gene Serdena created a dense backstory, individually personalizing each makeup station with fifty years of history, memorabilia, photos and ribald graffiti. Emily Rolph on Graphics for Act 2: In Act 2, Steve's ability to command a team and take control over details continued to expand. The San Francisco Opera House was much more grand than Flint in both scale and history. Using a combination of modified archival posters from the San Francisco Opera and original artwork, we lined the red-painted hallways with wall-sized super graphics. Similarly, the graphics advertising the NeXT itself stepped up in scale. Instead of a few small posters, 35-foot-long NeXT banners dramatically unfurled in the lobby, large-mounted posters plastered the venue and bright advertisements lit up the backstage in glowing light boxes all hailing the arrival of NeXT. ACT 3, DAVIES SYMPHONY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO by Luke Freeborn, Supervising Art Director The third act details the 1998 launch of the iMac. At the time, the product embodied the functional simplicity and elegant minimalism Apple is known for. Guy and Danny wanted a setting that could visually reinforce this ideal. The San Francisco War Memorial Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall auditorium, with its beautiful Scandinavian-inspired