Power rig for Oz The Great And Powerful 2011 (video 1)
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Published 2020-02-17
Sam Raimi's, OZ the Great and Powerful was the first film shot at this brand new facility, and this power rig was designed to power the 6 stages on which it was shot.
This area was one long room over the 'breezeway', which was a hallway that connected all the sages at ground level.
The main power for the set lighting coming in was hundreds of 4/0 cables, each the thickness of garden hoses, carefully run so that power could be sent to each stage from the dimmer racks that allowed control of the thousands of lights on the sets.
So much power was required that new high tension power lines were run to the studio, and a scaffold tower with transformers was placed at one end of the building to reduce the incoming voltage from transmission line voltage to usable levels.
Each Stage used hundreds of old style Par 38, 1000 watt lamps, for general overhead illumination, plus various other large lights hung from the perms or mounted on man lifts.
Power rigs like this are planned and directed by rigging gaffers, based on the requirements of the production and those of the gaffer and director of photography.
Michigan's film industry experienced a huge boom in 2008, when outgoing governor Jennifer Granholm launched a film incentive program that refunded productions up to 40% of the money spent by filmmakers.
The Raleigh Studio complex was completed in 2010, on the site of the demolished General Motors Truck plant, and in addition to the newly constructed sound stages former office buildings were repurposed at studio offices.
Major films shot there included several Transformers Films and Batman vs Superman.
In 2010, incoming governor Rick Snyder froze the incentive program for nearly a year, halting the flow of incoming films, then restarted the incentives at a lower level of funding that saw a slow reduction in the number of films shot in Michigan until the program was finally cancelled in 2015- the result of Snyder's opposition to using public money for business incentives.
Williams International, a manufacturer of military hardware such as military drone engines acquired the property, and received public money in the form of business incentives.