Beauty and the Beast- Enchanted Rose

[gremlin1287]

We are going to be doing beauty and the beast for our next musical.
I've been trying to come up with a cheap, effective way that we can make the petals fall off of the rose. Any suggestions?

[jwl868]

I've never seen the stage show, but if the falling of the petals doesn't have to be seen, you could consider swapping out the rose for the petal-less rose during scene changes or blackouts.


Joe

[vguard420]

we jsut did the beast for our musical and we used a little electromagnet rig to make the petals fall... it was jsut a small electric magnet running off 12 volts on the rose and i stip of metal on the petal... our rose flew in so we jsut ran some wire to it and covered it with fake vines and floral tape... when the cue came for the petals to drop a guy on the fly rail killed the power to it and it would fall... to make it look even cooler we loaded the petal with gliter so it would really catch your eye when it fell

[dvsDave]

to possibly elaborate on the electro-magnet idea, perhaps you can hook the power up to a a fader of some sort and slowly decrease power. You also would vary the amount of metal on each petal. The petal with the least metal would fall first while the petal with the most metal falls last.

also like the glitter idea... I would rim each petal with a dull glitter, just enough to stand out without reflecting so much light that it's obvious that glitter was used. Just an idea, you will definitely have to experiment to get the result you are looking for...

Another idea that just occured to me is, depending on the distance the audience is from the rose, you may want to make the rose a bit larger-than-life. And if you are creating one from scratch, frequently look at it under the stage lighting to make sure that it looks the right shade of red or pink or whatever color you choose.

[vguard420]

i like the fader i idea alot
as for the glitter we really dident have a artform to we jsut used about a half bottle of glitter a show... after it fell there would still be glitter falling making the rose jsut look that much more enchanted...it was so pointlessly awsome

also we did use a rose that was huge ... between taht and the glitter it read really well... even frow way far back in the booth

[jonhirsh]

or you could just use more then one magnet one for every pettle you want to fall.


just a thought


ps when i did the show we used a projection for the flower just another creative idea


JH

[c22yossarian]

When we did the show we used a clear plastic rod to suspend the rose from below and then we would spin petals off (with the glitter) on other clear plastic rods. You couldn't see any of the rods and it worked really well.

[gremlin1287]

thanx for the enthusiastic response.
vguard420, i was thinking some way to use magnets or electricity. I really like your idea with dvsdave's fader concept.

as for using projection, i thought about it at first, but it would be very costly and still don't think it would look all that real...but feel free to prove me wrong, i welcome any constructive criticism...

again thanx for all the swift replies!!

[SketchyCroftPpl]

Just wonder, all of these making it sound like this thing is huge I mean if your having all this stuff running to it and everything. I've never seen this show, how big is it actually?

~Nick

[TheatreTechie]

Where is a good source for electrical magnets. Im working on a production soon and kinda like the idea for a magnet for each petal.