Set Construction

Location. Location. Location.

We needed a location that we could leave set pieces in and that would be available to us every Tuesday and Thursday from 7am-10:30am. With these restrictions, we settled on my co-creator's garage. It's free and empty by the time we start shooting at 8am. We do have some issues getting high quality audio, but as of right now, it is sufficient for our needs. 

Set Design

The Shelf

I purchased a shelving unit last semester for my YouTube set as I thought it would easier to shoot every episode with an established set. I didn't shoot when I got the shelf, but I knew since I had it already, it would be a great addition to the ION Set. The trick was getting it to our location. To do this it had to be disassembled, this required us to tear apart the backing already in place. Therefore we had to replace it. In the long run though I think is is for the better.

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The Knick Knacks

With our main set piece complete, we could now fill the shelf with knick knacks. I went to a myriad of stories to find just the right pieces to sit behind me. While they might change over time, these were all things that fit the show. The changes from the following photos are that the "@" sign was removed becasue it didn't have any significance other than being related to internet. And a photo the happened to be in a frame that I picked up at Goodwill was added under the elephant. You can see these changes in later photos.

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The 'ION' Sign

We wanted to add a sign on the opposing wall from shelf, so I picked up three different woods and two different letter sets from Hobby Lobby and laid out all of our options. After showing the following image to various friends and family members, we settled on sign 'F'. The chart on the right is a breakdown of the cost of each sign. 

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Wall Color

This was a major factor that took us quite a while to decide on. I prefer darker colors, but since the shelf was already black, we needed to steer clear of those. We then were thinking of a white with notes of blue. But after a little while, we settled on a brighter, more vibrant blue. On the left you can see a photo from our framing test (more on this later). The blue we selected is the top color on the blue card. 

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Total Set Costs

To keep track of our spending on this project, a running list of all costs was kept.

The Bookshelf contains all the elements that were purchased to build it.

All taxes are included. So at the end of the day, the entire ION set cost $204.42. As no fundraising was done for this project, the cost was split between myself and my co-creator.