Recent content by Chris Stolz

Look at a device for magicians called "VAPR"for making smoke.

I do it with flat black strings. I laminate pieces of paper so they catch the light and those are rigged on striges and hidden in the logs. The paper that gets town is tossed in and to the side and then the strung pieces can be slowly lifted. I also put a light in the logs that fades on when...

This is how I do mine....I've also done a couple where I had a cover that was pulled off. Those had a hole in the top of the cake and the cover was a piece of nylon that was sucked down into the hole when pulled. It looked great, but was a lot less practical than the video above.-Chris...

You mean the catterpillar right? The cat doesn't smoke...does he? Well either way, I find that if you have smoke coming up their back, it's hard to tell where it's coming from. Additionally, look at a device made for magicians called "VAPR".

I bought one of these 3 years ago. Never had to clean it and it works great. The remote has a pretty hefty range on it too. It was a pretty solid use for 30 bucks!

Pick up a mist lamp. The lamp goes in the body of the toaster and the "smoke" comes out the top. If you find one with a light, put a gel in there to change the color and make it look like fire.

I'd think it would just be too big and you would see a physical item rather than just a light, which a think it the charm of the illusion.I like the projector + sparkle mouse cursor solution myself. Install a glittery cursor, crank on the projector and simply move the mouse to fly her...

I just spent a few days teching a show with a 5500, but as soon as the lighting started to kick in my projections were toast. Try as he might, the LD just couldn't prevent ambient light from hitting the screen without sacrificing the visibility of the actors.We ended up renting a 14K (Barco...

I would argue though that the image renaming really only works well if your order doesn't change. In many cases, I'm moving things around a fair bit so I need to be able to move slides around, which is where PowerPoint was particularly handy (aside form the other reasons, just moving shapes...

Thanks Sean! This was at Meadowvale Theatre in Mississauga, ON.

We did our poison in a pretty neat way. First, the poison we used was a vile of vinegar and there was baking soda in the glass with some food coloring. This looked great when the poison was poured in. It both changed color and foamed up.What we did to add a little extra to it was a whole...

Thought I'd share a recent success projecting with PPT in Windows.So I spent a lot of time trying to select the best projection mapping software for a production of Chess. In particular, I wanted a Windows solution that I could install at home to practice on a scale model. I played around...

You don't need hydrolics when a see-saw works better (and more reliably)! Counterweight it with sandbags and it's easy to push. Run it though the back of the set and pump in some low fog to cover it.

I've done this show so many times that I created an ebook years ago with all of the effects. http://stolzproductions.com/product/the-effects-of-beauty-the-beast/