Resources Revealed: Promote the Brand and Offer Wow!
Southern Comfort turned to UV/FX to create a portable scenic system with a visual punch
Published in December 2009 branding | Departments
Southern Comfort turned to UV/FX to create a portable scenic system with a visual punch
Southern Comfort brought a challenge to Mowalla Productions: The company needed a brand-oriented look for its 10-city underCOVER? concert tour. It had to be easily transportable, it had to promote the Southern Comfort brand—and it had to be exciting.
Mowalla’s team – Whitney Fitzpatrick, Allison Knapp and Jim Dorroh – decided that UV/FX’s Dual Image scenery would give them what they wanted, scenery that would let them show two scenes on one piece.
Scenic designer Jon Craine, who frequently collaborates with UV/FX, worked with Southern Comfort and Mowalla to develop visual imagery that could be applied to a series of soft goods, including a 15x20 backdrop and two sets of 15-foot-high downstage legs. Craine has extensive experience and expertise working with ultraviolet-sensitive materials for stage, television and themed environments.
Craine provided a series of concept artwork based on the brand’s art direction. Southern Comfort was looking for an image that was inspired by modern rock poster art, yet true to the brand’s identity. The imagery Craine developed would also be applied to marketing and advertising materials, so it was essential that it be done within the parameters of the Southern Comfort brand.
Craine created a Southern Comfort-inspired city, with a Southern Comfort bottle as the central unifying compositional device around which the city grew. The music city featured a collage of speaker tower “buildings” and guitar necks rising around the giant bottle. The name of the heavily branded underCOVER? tour was featured on a scrolling banner that grounded the entire composition.
The imagery was applied to a central backdrop and modified for application to the downstage legs, which had to be designed to be rigged either horizontally or vertically, to work in different venues. The scenery was produced by UV/FX artist Rhett Butler, using the company’s custom line of clear, ultraviolet-sensitive scenic paints. Completely transparent under regular color stage lighting, the paints are colorful and brilliant when viewed under ultraviolet lighting.
The result: Wow! as the “city” is revealed under ultraviolet—and the brand presentation Southern Comfort was looking for.
For more information about UV/FX products, go to uvfx.com. For more information about Mowalla Productions, go to mowalla.com.
PHOTO
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UV/FX’s dual-image scenery provides two different scenes on one surface. The top image shows the scenery under normal light; the bottom image is what appears under ultraviolet light.