Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre obviously has a much larger budget and more resources than any theatre I’ve ever worked in, but even well-funded productions require a lot of resourcefulness. Earlier this year, the theatre put on a production of La Bayadère (The Temple Dancer), a ballet that tells the story of a tragic romance set in India. The opulent set required quite a few large, complex pieces, including a lifelike elephant. It couldn’t be life-sized, obviously, but it needed to be big enough to be seen clearly from the back of the theatre, so the set designers settled on a 5-foot-tall statue.
Anyone looking at the finished elephant would easily assume that it had been carved out of stone, but the foam material allowed for the elephant to be deceptively lightweight. Moreover, its construction, thanks to the 3D scanner and CNC machine, was a breeze, requiring very little time or money. The Bolshoi theatre has been creating a lot of its props and set pieces using this method.
“Scanning takes about 6 minutes and as a result we get an accurate and highly detailed 3D model in colour,” said scene decorator Ivan Petrov. “Such model can be stored for years, you don’t need any space for it, which is important, when you have limited storage facilities. What’s more, unlike clay or other materials, it is resistant to negative effects of atmosphere and time.”
I’m trying to imagine how my college theatre days would have been different if we had had a 3D scanner. Rather than a cramped, allegedly haunted room packed with physical objects, a digital library of 3D scanned props would have made things much easier to store, catalog and modify if necessary. Although, if I’m honest with myself, it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. Discuss this story in the 3D Scanning a Giant Elephant forum on 3DPB.com.