Fire

[tcahall]

Not really a lighting effect, but...

What about re-creating the flame effect that you see around Halloween with a flame colored piece of fabric being blown from below. Throw in some lights and a breakup gobo and you have a fire that an actor can "disappear" behind.

Tim.

[ajstubby]

I was doing a show where we did a really cool fire effect. It was to show homeless people around esentially trash can fires. We had these trap doors on stage where there was about a foot drop under the set and we put 4 par 16s (yes, they were really small) on a flicker box, and we had some random amber, red, and light blue gels that we cut to size and then cut pieces out of the gel and layered a couple of gels for each par. The effect was really cool becuase the light was directly under the person and the gels covered the full range of color that you would see in a fire. Hope this helps.

[ship]

Various scene machines were designed for such purposes if still out there, Got some R&V that with work would work as designed in the 50's I think if I had time to service them. There is also a S-4 Hybread that escapes my mind at the moment that's also out there on the rental market. It uses something like a 18" color wheel at the focus of that cut away S-4 fixture, normally made for clouds but can do fire also. Most fixtures that do clouds can do fire. There is also "the ripple machine" long ago made by Moonlight as a company which does good fire effects. Love twin spin gobo rotators also for doing such things. Many moving lights no doubt can also do this effect.

That's all rental gear and with budget for such things. Lots of other ways to do so, wonder how well some form of color scroller if a flame gel string was desined and made for the scroll would also do for such a thing? Otherwise look into "random flicker effect" as past postings for random strobes and combine the series fluorescent starter with wattage for fast strobing at random as backup effect to say what looks one can do with gobos and the light board. Perhaps even have that random flicker if a few of them in use effect the control of the gobo fixtures. Bring a series of them up at once and have that random flicker effect with gobo and gel take over, otherwise a chase or custom link effect by way of light board could also work. Each individual channel timed and controlled with base light help so as to reproduce fire.

Think of it as first you have your key and fill light, than you have say your timed special effect light running during that cue. Any good light board with memory should allow for say a base of light cue while a sub timed chase or timed sub cue is playing, otherwise with bump buttons or chase while such channels are in indipendant mode one can do it oneself.

In other words, lots of ways to do fire by way of gear designed to project it or cues in control of making it. Primary questions than are budget and time as determining quality.

[FatherMurphy]

I'm reminded of a story about a really, really low budget high school version of The Ten Commandments... for the burning bush, they had a small fake christmas tree in a washtub, with a window fan under it. When it came time for the bush to burn, they turned on the fan, and it blew red streamers up around the tree.

I'm also thinking of a production of 'Great Expectations' where a character burned in a fogger cloud and some low angle bright lights, with a smidgeon of imagination from the audience.