How to Turn a Shipping Container into a Workshop
3.2.1 Action! Shipping Containers in Entertainment & Events
The entertainment sector is a growing part of Australian industry. Whether it’s concerts, festivals, sporting matches, film production or conferences and meetings, there are many occasions when the humble shipping container is the perfect solution. We’ll check out the best ways to make use of a wide variety of shipping containers, from off the shelf 20 footers, to fully modified shipping containers built to spec.
How are Shipping Containers playing a starring role in the entertainment industry?
Refrigeration, Catering and Food
No matter the event, it’s almost always going to require some form of cold food or drinks for the crowd or crew. Refrigerated or “reefer” containers provide temperature adjustable (from -25 to +25 degrees celsius) storage in a range of sizes from 10-40 feet. Reefers are the ideal solution for short or long term storage of perishable goods, along with anything else that needs to be kept cold at your event or film set.
Modified shipping containers can be custom built to provide you with cafes, lunch rooms, dining rooms and lounges. Food grade stainless steel fittings can be installed along with bench tops, serving spaces and seating. A single well-fitted container kitchen can feed hundreds of hungry workers on a movie set, while a customised shipping container “food truck” is ideal for serving guests at a festival or concert.
Custom Ablutions Containers for Toilet & Shower Units
When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go and our ablution units are perfect whenever nature calls. Our toilet units are fully customisable and can contain either (or both) toilet cubicles and urinals. If required disabled access can be constructed according to local building code requirements.
Events and entertainment can be a messy business, so full hot water shower units are also available and can be constructed according to your unique specifications.
Custom Built Dressing Rooms
Whether it’s a concert, festival or film set – artists are going to have a dressing room in their rider list. Shipping containers can be modified to provide a dressing room that is far more customisable than the traditional “trailer”. With anything from 10-40 feet in length to play with, dressing rooms can be modified to suit your requirements and budget, with doors, windows, flooring, insulation and full electrics in order to keep the stars of the show happy, warm and dry between shots, or sets.
Film Sets
It’s easy to lose count on the number of film sets featuring shipping containers and ports, which have been featured in films such as Step Up – Revolution, Eraser, I-Robot, Lethal Weapon 2, Batman Begins and even Iron Man 3 while almost an entire series of “The Wire” was set amongst them on HBO. You’d also have a hard time trying to find a Hong Kong action movie that doesn’t have at least one fight scene in and around shipping containers!
Dry Storage
Major events or movie productions all mean equipment, lots of it. Container storage is great as it’s cost effective, easy to transport, stackable and modular. It’s the perfect storage solution for whatever your requirements including:
- cabling,
- set pieces,
- expensive AV equipment, and
- lighting.
Shipping containers are lockable, and theft resistant (especially when lock boxes have been added to prevent tampering with heavy duty padlocks) – keeping your precious equipment safe and out of the elements. No matter what you’ve got to store, there are sizes available from 10-40ft.
Generator Containers
All large scale events, from concerts to film sets require a large amount of power – often in remote locations off the grid. Shipping containers are ideal for securely and quietly housing generators of most sizes. Generator containers can be customised to include flooring, air vents & fuel access doors.
Performance and Exhibition Space
Shipping containers have even been used as a performance and exhibition space in New Zealand. Twenty eight containers were installed on Wellington’s waterfront to create “The Performance Arcade”. Shipping containers were used as unique art and performance spaces for experimental theatre, where one performer even performed inside 8 shipping containers stacked upon one another as part of the New Zealand Festival.
At festivals such as the Eastern Electrics festival near London, stacked shipping containers have been used to create the “switchyard stage” – a techno themed stage with DJs operating out of the back of a truck until the early hours of the morning. With their ability to be stacked, cut and modified, shipping containers provide an excellent building block for constructing staging and performance areas of all shapes and sizes and an interesting alternative to standard scaffolding.
Shipping containers have been used to create VIP lounges at the Voodoo Festival in Louisiana, while across the United States modified shipping containers have been turned into portable 8 seater pop up movie theatres.
Are you in the entertainment and events sector and in need of a shipping container?
Whether it’s a concert, film set or major event you’re organising, contact our team of shipping container superstars at Gateway Container Sales and Hire. We’ve got the right containers for the job. From storage to custom buildings, set pieces and even staging – our standard or modified shipping containers are cheap, modular and portable, perfect for almost any situation that requires a giant metal box! You might even end up with a container that’s starred in its own film.
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