G.O.P. Convention Stage Design: Creating "America's Living Room" for Romney

August 28, 2012

Jim Fenhagen and his colleague Eddie Knasiak at Jack Morton Worldwide faced an unusual situation last summer when they began working on the design of the stage for the Republican National Convention: They didn’t know who the candidate would be.

“A year out it wasn’t clear who was going to get the nomination. You have to figure out a design that hopefully is flexible enough that when a candidate comes in, you can use as much of it as possible,” said Fenhagen, a senior vice president at Jack Morton Worldwide, who has designed sets for The Daily Show, Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, and recently ABC’s Good Morning America. “Once the candidate is chosen, the convention committee is very open to what [the candidate] thinks we should do, because ultimately it is their campaign and their image they are trying to communicate.”

Fenhagen's team began by focusing on the elements that would be the same for any nominee: the general layout of lighting and rigging, and the location of the stage within the Tampa Bay Times Forum. By last spring, when it became clear Romney would be the nominee, Fenhagen met with Romney campaign strategist Russ Schriefer to finalize the design. “He talked about how Mitt Romney did really well in these town-hall meetings, these smaller, more intimate settings,” Fenhagen said. "So how could we create something in this big scale that still felt intimate so he could connect with delegates who were there? And he used this phrase, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if it felt like he was in America’s living room.’ That stuck out."

So the designers went back to work. “There was a pretty intense period in March, April, and May where we pulled it all together,” he said. "[The final design] had the same footprint as the original but a totally different design."

Here’s a look at the final product: the stage, designed by Fenhagen and Knasiak, and constructed by Freeman, where Romney is scheduled to accept the nomination Thursday night.

"You have to get the stage up to a certain height so people can see. In this case, that turned out to be six feet high, but in order not to have six-foot walls, we put a lot of stairs around it. So it feels like you can just walk down into the crowd," Fenhagen said.

Photo: Courtesy of the Republican National Convention

Romney's strategists envisioned "America's living room" as the design for the convention stage inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum. "We used the same wood tones to frame the screens, but they are layered so they are a mosaic of shapes. Above the whole thing are these skylights made out of screens as well. So in a sense it has a domestic architecture to it. It has a ceiling and walls and the things that are more typical of a living room architecture," said Fenhagen.

Photo: Courtesy of the Republican National Convention

"I did a lot of thinking about how a live event can look good on TV. I’m trying to make sure the close-ups are going to work. That’s what the millions of people watching TV are going to see, mostly close-ups. The depth of the set is the most behind the center speaker, so it really falls off and makes a nice soft picture behind the speaker. At the same time, there’s a lot of really important people that are there in person, and it needs to look great for them. And the whole energy of the event is part of the live experience. So the design needs to entertain those people as well,” said Fenhagen.