Fire

[desantiscott]

I am working on a school production of "Pippin". I have to simulate him "catching on fire", and the school I am working with (no surprise) will not let me actually put real fire on stage. I am trying to figure out what I could possibly use to create this type of effect...

The end of the show has Pippin being set on fire and "going out in a blaze of glory". So essentially I have to recreate that somehow or some way...

I thought of using rotating gobos or something of the sort with a back light shadow... clearly I have to go abstract with it since I cant use real fire.

Also I am on a limited budget so a moving fixture or anything of that sort unfortunately is out of the question.

Any ideas?

[LightingPenguin]

My suggestion:
Rosco US : Lighting Equipment : Double Gobo Rotator
or http://www.lighttheatrics.com/gobo_rotators.htm

If you do go with either of these, use 2 gobos

[Esoteric]

Have you tried building your own LED fire effect? You could use it as a top and overlay a gobo. It would be time consuming but cheap and a great experience for you. Use red/amber/yellow LEDs with flourescent starters and a DC transformer.

Mike

[desantiscott]

Can you go into a little more detail about the LED fire effect? Time consuming is not an issue with me, I am always looking for an excuse for over night work!

[BillESC]

The Fire Fox Projector might work for your purposes.



It's under a hundred bucks.

[willbb123]

I did this show in high school. Looking back the way that we did it was stupid and very dangerous.

If I had to do it again I'd get out our smoke machiene, a few of our strobes, and play with some gobos (haha Iphone keeps wanting to change gobos to hobos) in our source4s. Fire the strobes fill the box with smoke, black out the area and/or fly in the midstage drop.

[chrispo86]

I did Pippin while I was actually still in the high school I now help out at, but that was a while ago, and now I don't remember how we did it. I know we had the lead player light some flash paper (available at any magic shop) when he was explaining to Pippin to give the audience the idea of what was supposed to take place. I don't think we did any effects other than that.

We did do Princess Bride last year and when we needed to create the effect of someone on fire we used this:

GAM : FILM/FX

Worked great. Just throw it in an appropriately colored S4 (I think we actually taped different scraps of gel together to give a multi-colored flame) and let it go. We've used that little animator for a couple of things and it always pulls through.

[desantiscott]

that flame scroller is interesting I just got off the Phone with Rosco and and was looking into getting a few different glass gobos with some regualr steel gobos to see if I can get something working that way but I have a feeling it may come out to be the same look at the scroller you just showed me... Hmmm....

[Esoteric]

Yeah, we used a few hundred LEDs and ours was for a bowl, so we mounted them inside the bowl, wired them up (make sure you know which is the + and which is the -) with a transformer and flourecent starters (you will have to wire them in a box). They will fire off at different, seemingly random times.

We did this before LED fixtures were any good at all. It made a nice fire effect with some silk. I am not sure if you could get enough juice for your purpose, but it is something to think about.

Mike

[PeterWatsonScenic]

Think a black painted box - about the size of a small closet with a door in the side. The front is made of 2 sheets of plexiglass about 3 inches apart. It is important that they are airtight on the sides. At the bottom of the plexi-cavity is a fan - or a duct leading to a fan and a lighting instrument pointing up the cavity. Running from one sheet of plex to the other are several randomly spaced randomly spaced lengths of thin wire each having a light weight trangle of orange-red-yellow silk attached.
Leading player throws player in box - "locks door" fan and lights start, actor appears to burn inside the box.
The concept is proven - and shown (in the distance) at 69 Compromiser.JPG on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Good luck with your show
PW