by Kim Anastasia, director

In the summer of 2005, when we were in the process of designing our new set, our Executive Producer requested that we create a “Celebrity Signing Wall” - a place where the signatures/autographs of celebrities who appear on our stage could be forever immortalized.

We all agreed that this was a fantastic idea (why didn’t we do it before?!) We experimented with materials and lighting to get the best effect, and our Signature Wall was born. Jay Leno and The Rock were among the first to sign.

By current standards, i.e., the technology we have grown so accustomed to using in our daily lives, this is a relatively simple process. To me it is, as is most of technology, still magic, not because it is mysterious - the nuts and bolts of the process can be understood - but because it is completely wondrous.

What human beings have achieved in the last sixty years is phenomenal and, while one can safely argue that we must imbue every achievement with more wisdom, it is still nonetheless remarkable how far we’ve come. Using our Signature Wall as an example, the technology simply wasn’t available several years ago to do what we are doing now.

I’ve included some photos from our Sylvester Stallone shoot to help illustrate the Signature Wall process. The first two photos are of Sly signing with Nancy O’Dell. Then there is a close-up of Sly’s etched signature, along with a wider shot of the signature wall.

Here’s how it works, as described by our Technical Manager, Erick Diaz, “We use a Mac Powerbook G4 with a DVI video signal splitter which feeds a Dell LCD monitor and a Wacom Tablet, which uses the pen in Adobe Illustrator as a writing tool.” To elaborate, our celebrities sign the Wacom Tablet.

A Wacom Tablet is essentially a design tool used by graphic artists or anybody who likes to pretend to be one, like me. The touch screen pad makes it easier to manipulate color, size, images, etc. Our Wacom Tablet is connected to a Mac computer. An Adobe Illustrator digital file is generated from the original signature.

The Illustrator file is sent to our art department for preliminary checking, then on to graphics. Our graphics department cleans up the file and creates a plate for the construction shop, saving and numbering the originals for future reference. The construction shop does all the etching on hot edge brushed plexiglass.

They do a beautiful job, I must say, and the final product is mounted on our Wall. Each plexi panel contains generally three names, depending upon how much real estate each signature uses.

This is generally how our process works. I’ve left out a couple of steps for the sake of clarity. Thanks to Erick, James, Rich and Alan for their contribution to this blog!