“Shall I render utilizing proposed specifications?”

"Thrill me."

Unlike Marvel's Iron Man, JJest does not have a futuristic A.I. assistant capable of manufacturing designs under the floorboards of a sprawling Malibu mansion. However, on occasion we are lucky enough to hand off work to Professional Scenic Services, and the experience is very similar.

Your bioreactor has been delivered ✔️

(some assembly required)

Setting the tone, and hue

Colors don't pop themselves.

If you've ever noticed the colors of a film, concert, or other experience were particularly pleasing to the eye, odds are that there was a visual director behind the scenes with very strong and detailed opinions about those colors.

On a large project it's tempting for designers to adopt a vague visual directive like super colorful or oversaturated, but these approaches are open to interpretation and thereby more often result in muddied and clashing color schemes.

Instead, it's best to create a specific swatch of colors to guide every material, surface treatment, light wash, accent light, and projected image within a set. If a scene is dynamic, such as SPECIMEN, it may be necessary to create multiple swatches for each scene.

COLOR STUDY

SPECIMEN's color direction takes cues from from a specific scene from Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In the film, the lunar landing scene (pictured below) serves as a visual transition from the ultra-high contrast black and white aesthetic of the previous space travel sequence to the more colorful aesthetic of the next sequence inside the colorful technology-rich subterranean lunar base.

This precedent offered a beautifully elegant approach to treating the interior and exterior of SPECIMEN's pipes.

IMPLEMENTATION

Several light fixtures were installed in late 2021 to boost color and photographability within the room. Currently we are working on tying the DMX light fixtures into the interactive audio/video system, which will allow the lights to dim and complement the interactive shields that are activated via the valve wheels.