One might ask what a Swedish beauty care company is doing at CES—Consumer Electronics Show—where one expects the gadgets of the future, but boy did Foreo raise eyebrows with the theatricality of their show, from the sound of chainsaws to gas fumes, and vials of pink liquid offered by scientists in white lab coats for visitors brave enough to imbibe. The booth caused quite the uproar with long lines to be part of The Foreo Experience in Las Vegas, January 7-12, 2018.
Designed by a team of theatrical designers, with scenery by John Iacovelli, lighting by Brian Gale, and sound by Cricket Myers, the booth was built by Sin City Scenic. Intended to be a research facility, with armed guards at the perimeter, guests were blindfolded, while some were wrapped in yellow sheets and plastic wrap. Quite a production to sell a 20-minute “smart” facial mask at a show that features next-generation innovations for consumers, from laptops to televisions: But there is no doubt that Foreo made their mark!
Live Design reached out to the creators and builders of the Foreo booth, to get their take on the project. Read Sin City Scenic's account of the booth.
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Scenic Designer John Iacovelli:
The greatest challenge about designing this booth for Foreo was time. I was contacted in early December by an old friend of mine named Goran Gajic. I had worked with Goran on Babylon 5 where he directed an episode, and we had remained friends. Goran had a friend who was working at Foreo, a cosmetic appliance company who wanted to do a kind of gorilla-theatre event at the upcoming CES convention in Las Vegas.
Goran developed a script, that was really more theatre with a kind of “mad scientist gone crazy” story, and I got together a team of designers including Brian Gale for lighting, Kate Bergh for costumes, and Cricket Myers for sound. We met at Goran's house near Lake Hollywood, under the Hollywood sign, and we sketched a plan for the booth, which had to fit into 600 sq. ft, which was basically a 20' x 30' foot rectangle. We found out we could go up to 27' high, which was great because we decided to make a booth quite tall in order for it to be seen from anywhere on the floor of the convention hall. We had already missed many of the deadlines for booths going into the CES, so we had to have creative ways to make a design that would not need to be stopped by regulations.
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Goran wanted the booth to look like an outpost from something like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or maybe a government temporary stand-up emergency shelter as if it were at Area 51. I contacted a former student of mine, Travis Kerr, who has been working on television as a set designer, and he put together some more developed drawings that really helped drive the show forward by getting it into shops for bids. I sent it to five different shops in the US and Canada. Most shops turned it down because of how late we were and also because we straddled the holidays, and most shops couldn’t do it because of the short timeframe; and the ones that gave us bids, the price was way too high.
We settled on a new shop to me, that my friend Dana Moran Williams had recommended in Las Vegas called Sin City Scenic. They had a very proactive attitude and also had a lot of stock ModTruss, which was a new kind of truss I had seen last year at USITT that I quite liked. It was perfect for our weird alien meets US military look! They also came in about 100% over what our budget was, but we were able to make some compromises, and they were very proactive in suggesting substitutions so we got the price down to an acceptable level. They took on this project with a great attitude. I would highly recommend them, and in fact, I will give them bids in the future.
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I hired a former student of mine, Michael Wheelock, to serve as a decorator, and he went to several places in LA for modern props and rented equipment and sci-fi gear that helped the interior look like a military installation but also a place where you might do an alien autopsy. We also started doing graphics but then Foreo took the graphics over because they want to control that part of the project. The load in was fast and furious, and we had many look-i-loos from other booths coming over to see what all the commotion was about. All in all, this was a fast and fun project that generated a lot of heat for the client at CES.
Read more about the stage build and lighting design!