Rose Parade Float
People ask us all the time; how do the floats get built and when do they start on them? Well, the first things that happens is that the President of the Tournament of Roses Association seslects a theme for the next year's parade. Then the designers have just over a month to come up with the designs that then need to go through the approval process. A wonderful description of the process comes from the News Journal wire services (2003)
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Rose Parade scramble begins with theme selection
News-Journal wire services (2003)
PASADENA, Calif. -- "No more dragons, please," Joe Delgatto says wearily into the microphone. "For the last time, we have too many dragons."
The words spread over the Rose Room like a pesticide. About 40 people, nearly all of them men hunched at circular tables, groan. Rifling through briefcases and file folders, they begin to discard line drawings of floral parade floats -- floats with dancing dragons, dragons swimming in the ocean, dragons riding in fire engines.
One man, instead of trashing his dragon float, takes a pink pen, dras an "X" through the dragon and in block letters writes in: "GIRAFFE."
This is the Theme Draft, the odd and unofficial kickoff of next years Tournament of Roses parade. The planning of parade floats is now a year round, mulitmillion-dollar enterprise. The draft, a behind-closed-doors event, serves to prevent the chaos of too many eagles, or eggshells, dolls or dogs, polo players or potbellied pigs.
The float builders -- fives cities, one university and four small companies that make thier living constructing Rose Parade floats for coporate sponsors and nonprofits -- must reserve each theme they intend to use.
It will take them about four hours, with builders taking turns claiming themes over 20 rounds the way por basketball teams pick prized rookies. The process offers a rear window on a Southern California tradition, like a glimpse inside Wolfgang Puck's kitchen. It blends the feel of a carnival rehersal with the formality of international diplomacy, the tension of a family reunion, the obsessiveness of Martha Stewart and the strategy of a silent auction. In all, more that 150 themes will be reserved on this February day for a parade that will ultimately have fewer than 55 floats.
The builders arrive shortly before 8:30 a.m., a starting time that, like everything about the Theme Draft, is set down in a handbook that runs 42 pages. They sit at circular tables that must be 54 inches in diameter and eat a continental breakfast with coffee that must be brewed in a pot with the Tournament of Roses logo.
The coffee is appreciated. The builders have spent the weeks between the Jan. 1 parade and the draft compiling black-and-white drawings of possible floats. The floats must have some connection to the parade's overall theme - 2003's will be "Children's Dreams, Wishes, and Imagination" -- but there are few other limits on design.
The presidents of the two largest building companies, Phoenix Decorating Co. and Fiesta Parade Floats, have brought more than 100 drawings of prospective floats.
As the draft starts, the builders must remain seated at the round tables. Direct communication between the builders and the parade volunteers who administer the draft is fobidden. Lower-level parade volunteers serve as "runners," bringing the submitted designs from the circular tables where the builders sit to the panel of recatangular tables, where the judges pore over them.
Mike McFatridge, 31, construction chairman for South Pasadena's citizen-built entry, reaches into a glass bowl and selects a piece of paper with the number 1. He'll have the very first pick of themes.
"Excellent!" he says. "We've got our circus train locked up!"
South Pasadena's good luck only adds to the anxiety at the other tables. The four float-building companies want desperately to snap up float concepts favored by companies and nonprofits that have long sponsored floats; Pheonix has already presold four or five float concepts. But if a city with a high draft pick snaps up that concept, the building compnay won't have it to sell.
"The first two rounds are the toughest," says Larry Crane, who owns Charisma Floats, which had four floats in the 2002 parade. "I submit things that I really want to have, and then I hold my breath."
The draft is as secretive as it is strange. The builders all have deep personal and family connections to the parade and each other. The compaines have varying reputations; Phoenix is known for iits size and animation prowess, and Fiesta for its' innovation in decoratoins (last year's big advance: dehydrated carrots). But in truth, the desingers think remarkably alike. At the draft, the builders sit apart and rarely talk, conscious of theme theft.
"We play our floats extremely close to the vest," says Fiesta President Tim Estes.
For all the anxiety and complaints of the four builders, the draft in many ways is structured to preserve theose companies' stranglehold on the parade. Only the builders who had floats in last year's parade can draft in the first 10 rounds. Two prospective new builders, unable to reserve a theme before round 11, failed to even show up at this year's draft.
In addition, a rule grants four draft picks to each builder for every float in the previous year's parade. Phoenix, which built 25 of the 53 floats in 2002, thus gets 100 draft picks in the Theme Draft -- in other words, an average of five per round.
"It's very difficult to break into this parade as a new builder," says Crane of Charisma Floats, who explains that the process must be fair to companies, like his, that are dedicated entirely to the Rose Parade. "And it isn't easy to grow."
Once all the first-round draft picks have been submitted, Joe Delgatto and his team of judges go to work.
This is the 13th year that Delgatto, a Wisconsin native who moved to Southern California in his teens, has been a Tournament volunteer, but it's his first overseeing the draft. Judging the proposed themes with him are the chairmen of three other Tournament committees, including his younger brother John, an independent music producer and publisher who oversees the parade's float consturction effort.
The Delgattos and their fellow judges -- an accountant, a Los Angeles firefighter and a retired hospital marketing executive -- now study the submitted first-round drawings. Do the renderings have some reference to children and dreams, the overall theme? The judges also flag floats that could provide potential logistical problems.
Gary Thomas, the red-jacketed Tournament president who picked the overall theme, peers over judges' shoulders and steps in to guide the discussion.
Back at the judging table, repetition of elements in different floats becomes the major concern.
Fiesta, with the sixth pick, reserves a dragon theme. So Festival, with the eighth pick, is forced to alter its dragon theme. A dog becomes a cat in another design.
As the rounds progress, repetition becomes so great that Delgatto rules out entire classes of floats entirely. "Boats and ships" are disqualified after the seventh round. By the 13th round, Delgatto is declaring: "No more fire engines or flying horses."
After 20 rounds, the draft ends, but the Delgattos' high-wire act is not over. Volunteers will spend the following weeks reviewing the draft for any unnoticed repetition. Sponsors will have to commit.
Builders will have until May 1 to sell the float designs they reserved to sponsors. If a design doesn't sell by then, the builder forfeits his rights to it. And even those designs that do sell are subject to extensive review from the Tournament's Design Variance Committee, of which the Delgatto brothers are both members.
"If you think the Theme Draft is crazy," says Joe Delgatto, "you ought to see us meet in committee."
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Today, float building is a multi-million dollar business. Although a few floats are build solely by volunteers from their sponsoring comunities, most are built by professional float building companies. Float consturction begins shortly after the previous year's Parade is over.
Orders are placed for flowers.
Where do these millions and millions of flowers come from? They come form every continent on Earth - except Antartica. Roses come from South America; primarily Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia. Many also are imported from Costa Rica. Orchids are flown in from Asia and Hawaii; Hydrangea come from Australia; Tulips naturally enough are a product of Holland, and many dry flowers such as the iridecent while Everlasting are native to South Africa. There are also "locally" grown flowers from growers right here in California who provide Mums, Marigolds, Galangela, Statice, and Brids of Paradise. The week before the parade, foreign flowers are flown in almost daily in refrigerated containers; locally grown blossoms are trucked to the decorating faciliteis cut and bunched in water filled buckets. The flowers are then preocessed and kept at optimum temperature in huge flower tents and refrigerated truck containers.
Prepare schematics on structure and artwork. Design animation system. Begin construction of chassis and props.
The process starts with a specially built chassis, upon which is built a framework of steel, fine mesh screening, and chicken wire. The steel rods are bent by hand creating realistic or whimsical forms and creatures. The finer details of faces and hands, etc, are carved from a special form by the art department staff.
Begin construction of animation. Complete construction of chassis. Begin final artwork (painting).
In a process called "cocooning" the fame is sprayed with a polyvinyl material, which is then painted in the colors of the flowers and other natural materials the be applied later. The decks are sprayed with a foaming resin that forms the base for the "gardens," all those flowers in vials that cover the bottom of the float.
Complete construction of props
Complete construction of animation
Complete artwork (painting)
Begin dry decoration.
26th - Begin fresh decoration
Then decorating begins! Every inch of the float must be covered with flowers or other natural materials, such as leaves, seeds, or bark. Volunteer workers swarm over the floats in the days after Christmas, thier hands and clothes covered with glue and petals. Each float is decorated with more flowers than the average florist will use in five yeras. Dry materials are applied on the 26th, 27th, and most of the 28th, then comes the hardier fresh material, like brussel sprouts, cabbages, potatoes, etc. and in the last 48 to 36 hours the more delicate and short lived fresh flowers go on, the ones in vials last of all.
Main Judging. Transport to parade route.
