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The West End Comes to Acton
June 10th saw the West End move to Acton as ETC CEO Fred Foster unveiled his latest ‘interior’ at the company’s new European headquarters in West London.
Following his success with Town Square, in their world headquarters in Middleton, Wisconsin USA, Fred's woodwork8 shop used seven tonnes of MDF and a selection of expanded metal to reproduce one ton of internal themed panels to create a West End Theatre in the centre of their new building.
Chatting with Fred revealed that he has two passions: clearly one for ETC – and the other for a $70,000 CNC routing machine that having mastered he was able to use produce some amazing period reproduction finishes out of MDF that leave the average set builder awestruck! He even produced MDF covers for the exit signs so they had the right period look!
The finished result is a West End theatre auditorium with seats and an audience watching the show! The audience was painted by Scenic Artists Sue McElhaney and Bill ‘Flash’ Florac who were also involved in the original Town Square in Middleton, with local UK support from scenic artist Adam Cutts. If you get a chance to visit, see if you can recognise who is sitting in the audience. And there’s another story here. Reviewing movies with shots of an audience lead the team to Mel Brooks 'The Producers' and Hitchcock's ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’. However the resulting images looked too unhappy and too similar, so further work was needed to produce the resulting smiley faces!
The theatre is, of course, only part of ETC’s new facility, which includes a large airy well-equipped demonstration and training room separated from the theatre with a safety curtain made out of a painted roller shutter type door. Simple and very clever!
The rest of the building houses a large warehouse space, full of one week’s supply of Source 4's when I wandered around! Another significant aspect is that the office layout is based around everyone being able to see daylight no matter where they sit or what position they hold.
So congratulations ETC on a great building and facility, and well done to Fred Foster in particular. As a footnote, I hear the woodwork shop might be getting busy for other venue in the not too distant future!
Nick Mobsby
In picture: Fred Foster in ETC’s new European HQ in London.
13th June 2006
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