Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/834282
great look but raised concerns about its life span and wearability. Some earlier thoughts had involved making flooring out of tiles of back-printed acrylic. I began thinking how to merge these ideas: a tiled masonite painted floor, with sheets of plastic on top as protection. At first, this seemed like a poor idea; a gloss floor would reflect every lighting instrument in the grid. I remembered, however, another backlit project where the Lexan had been sanded (or, more accurately, Scotch-Brited, if that's a word) to create a soft, diffused look. This sort of surface treatment would kill the reflection problem and would allow scrapes to be touched up simply by having an oscillating sander and a Scotch-Brite pad standing by on set. Any breakage could be dealt with by a standby sheet; and polycarbonate is actually supposed to be bulletproof anyway. All that was needed now was a traction test, and we decided to drive the forklift around on top, just to see what would happen. Turns out that a sanded Lexan floor is wonderful on camera. The fourth season is filming now, and the floor from the pilot is still being used. Dan asked for lights and visual activity in the walls of the Man Cave. The space is supposedly underground, so it needed some natural rock or stone walls to sell the idea. To make the idea and the treatment meet, we conceived the harnessing of some sort of natural (but unknown to us) power or energy that was contained within the very rock of Swellview itself. This power in the rock was made visual by installing fiber-optic filament in all of the vacuformed stone wall flats. The harnessing of this power was accomplished in two parts. First, with something I'd been itching to use for some time: five large-scale neon crackle tubes, made with an extra external glass envelope that you could fill with fluid and pass bubbling air through. We, of course, doubled-down on this construction by building another envelope of a larger acrylic tube for the units to be installed inside, which then provided a mounting surface for a row of iColor LED cove-lighting instruments from Philips Color Kinetics. Conceptually, I think of these items as the catalysts for gathering the raw power from the rock. For the second part of the power harnessing, large-scale vertical pilasters were built with two runs of blue Californeon electroluminescent tape that the stage electricians, led by Tom Stanger, pulse manually during filming. I think of these as the conduits for the energy, flowing either to storage or to some current use. The pilasters also feature a central strip of red Californeon that flashes in times of emergency. Both the script and normal expectations for a secret headquarters dictated a variety of entrances and exits for the Man Cave. These connections to the outside world, and within the secret world of the cave itself, bore careful consideration. Of primary importance was the connection between the underground space and the storefront—Junk-N-Stuff. This would be the initial entrance to the set, a frequently used (and comedic) entrance for Henry. It evolved into an elevator of phenomenal length that dropped at dazzling speed. It is a strange elevator cab within the show's reality, a mesh platform without walls, ceiling or convenient handrail, in which the uninitiated do a somewhat controlled free-fall from street level to the cavern level below. Comedy gold! Filming the various descents have been the source of much labor by the camera, visual effects and special effects departments, but the source of much entertainment as well. The entrance to Captain Man's living quarters is accomplished via an oversized elliptical cogwheel that flies in and out to reveal the passage to the inner room. There are also various secret entrances from and to the main space, built into the TRON paneling in the walls. One such secret entrance is behind the Auto Snacks machine (the show's version of the Replicator from Star Trek), and it has evolved into the main access to the rest of the cavern system. There's a by the camera, visual effects and special effects departments, but the source of much entertainment as well. The entrance to Captain Man's living quarters is accomplished via an oversized elliptical cogwheel that flies in and out to reveal the passage to the inner room. There are also various secret entrances from and to the main space, built paneling in the walls. One such secret entrance is behind the Auto Snacks machine (the show's version ), and it has evolved into the main access to the rest of the cavern system. There's a