- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, I wanna show you
how to set up pipe and drape.
Kettner Creative as an audiovisual company
located in Western Canada.
We film videos like this all the time.
So if you're an AV geek
or just interested in the event industry,
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more of the videos that we produce in the future.
Now, pipe and drape is an event basic staple.
It's at almost every event you've ever been to
whether or not you've noticed it.
It's used to hide unsightly areas of your venue,
and it's used to narrow the attention of your guests.
Like you can see in the video here,
we blacked out the sides of the video.
There's two very common types of drape at your event.
There's banjo drape and there's velour drape.
We've done a separate video describing the differences
between those two different fabrics,
but the hardware and the setup process is the same.
If you want more information on the two different fabrics,
please check out that video linked in the description below.
Now, when you're setting up pipe and drape,
there's a couple of things you need to know.
There's three pieces, or four if you count the drape.
So there's the base plate that you see on the floor here.
There's an upright pole, a crossbar,
and then there's the fabric that you use,
the actual drape that you're trying to hang at your event.
Most people are pretty surprised when they realize
that a single person should be able to set up
about 100 feet of banjo drape per hour,
or about 200 feet of velour per hour.
That's what we have found with our team.
Obviously, if you're new to pipe and drape,
it'll probably take you a little bit longer
or you'll need to double up.
You'll need two people to accomplish the same speed.
So I'm gonna show you how to set up the pipe and drape
and give you some tips along the way.
So first things first, I put the base plates down.
That's the most difficult part.
Sometimes the pin is unscrewed,
but we use these big base plate carts
so the pin is already assembled on the base plate.
Next, as you can see here is the upright.
There's two different types of uprights
that are common with events.
The first is a fixed upright.
It's just a single length.
You just drop it on the pole and that's it.
This is a more advanced version of the upright
that allows telescoping so you can adjust the height.
I'm gonna give you some tips on a good way to do that
that is fast.
So what I do is I will start with the crossbar.
So here we have the crossbar.
It has a little hook on it.
You can see there.
So generally these crossbars go between six and 10 feet.
There's little quick clips.
You can see there, the button just popped in,
and you can go out to 10 feet.
Just because of the small video studio
we're working in right now,
we're gonna set these up six feet wide.
So what I do if I have a crew of multiple people,
I'll have one guy just setting base plates down.
I'll have another guy going around with the crossbar
and he'll measure the pin from pin to pin.
And then he'll adjust the spacing as necessary.
So he's just following the base plate guy,
just setting the spacing of all the base plates.
Once all the base plates are down,
then we grab an upright, we put it in.
It just drops in, right like that.
Now, if you're really paranoid,
you can check your work.
But you'll find out that it's still six feet at the top
just like it is at the bottom.
The next, we have our drape.
If your span is six feet wide like it is here,
we recommend two pieces of banjo drape.
If it's eight feet wide,
we recommend doing three pieces of banjo drape.
And if it's 10 feet wide, we recommend doing four pieces.
That gives you the nice fullness that you're looking for
so it's not too transparent and it looks nice.
So this part isn't rocket science.
You just slide the fabric over the crossbar.
Sometimes if you have multiple people,
we just like to have one person just stuffing cross bars
while the other people drop the base plates,
put the uprights on, and measure it all out.
Stuffing the drape is the more time-consuming part.
And then as you can see here at the end of the drape,
there's a little hook.
And it just goes right into the slot
at the top of the upright.
Now, a lot of people are pretty confused
as to how to set the height.
The tendency is to raise this upright
and be watching the height
and have a spotter way out in front of you.
For us, we keep it much more simple than that.
All of our drape is sewn perfectly.
So we watch the bottom.
And we wait until that moment that the drape
is just about to lift off, and then we stop.
If you stop there by watching the bottom,
then you know that you have
a perfectly flat crossbar always.
So I'll watch the bottom.
Shake it out, so I'm a little bit high.
You just gotta lower it a little bit.
Right there, just so it's barely touching.
Then we pull it over.
Pull this over.
So on this side we're definitely a bit high.
There you have it.
That's how you set up pipe and drape at your event.
Then you just make it look good by spacing it out.
So it's not too bunched up, something like that.
So if you have one guy, you should be able to do
100 feet an hour.
Teardown goes really, really quick.
You can do about 100 feet in 15 minutes.
And yeah, just add more people if you need more.
If you have any questions,
please leave a comment in the comment section below.
Otherwise, thank you for watching this video.