Sign silhouette - gobo or projector?

If you put the rectangle of pie plate in the gobo slot while the lens tube is out, you can lightly trace the circle of the gate precisely so you know exactly where to make your cuts. @Painterspoon If you decide to cut your gobo by hand, REMEMBER to cut it UPSIDE DOWN / reversed from the image you wish to project. I'd hate for you to put hours into this only to discover you've cut it flawlessly upside down. Perhaps cut something quick and simple as an experiment for practice and to understand the correct orientation.
It's one of those errors you, optimistically, only make once. @Painterspoon
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
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when you cut a gobo out of pie tin you need to remember all mistakes will be enlarged. So simple is better.
as far as UV that Bill suggested http://www.wildfirefx.com/products/paints/invisibleluminescent.html would be the commercial product.
I might suggest painting it with liquid laundry soap, find a nice product with "optical brighteners" and you have found a invisible luminescent that you could use as an inexpensive paint.
cleanup is easy.
 
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If this is a metal gobo, you can mirror and rotate it yourself before or after you cut it. :)
Inverting it is somewhat more difficult if you cut it from one piece of foil intending to use it as its own gobo holder. I believe the discussion related to cutting the gobo as its own holder from an oven liner. @Painterspoon @TJCornish
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
@Painterspoon Have you cut your first test gobo yet?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
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I would like to project the shadow of a sign across the back wall of my set. Because the sign would only be visible for 2 minutes, I don't want to physically build it.

I have a DMX system with 60 dimmers and a Colortran 12/24 controller. Someone told me our system would never be able to handle a gobo, but I think they were talking about motorizing. I don't need the thing to move - I just want a crisp projection across the back wall, like the sun is shining through it.

Can I make a gobo for one of my Lekos? Is that ridiculously expensive?

I notice there are some DJ-type Chauvet lights where you can make your own paper gobo (?!?!) and was also wondering if they can be used effectively on stage and punch through some spill.

Any and all advice is welcome...I'm learning something every day on this forum!
@Painterspoon How has this been going for you? Have you cut and tested your first hand cut aluminum foil test gobo yet?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
Not yet - the show isn't for about a year and I'll have to wait until fall so I can use school money to buy a gobo holder first. Thanks for asking!
@Painterspoon
I believe several of us pointed out you can hand cut a gobo from a much larger blank so it serves as both a gobo and its own holder. Of course you loose the ability to rotate, invert, or shift the gobo relative to the holder but it's definitely the cheapest way to go if you're on an extremely tight budget. Local stores used to sell aluminum foil oven liners three to a package. The largest oven liners would provide enough flat aluminum to cut 9 or 12 self holding gobo's per liner / 27 to 36 per 3 pack of the largest liners. I'm suggesting the large, rectangular, shallow liners cooks use to collect grease drippings in the bottom of ovens. Being in Peterborough, you should be able to find affordable, light gauge, aluminum liners in any Home Hardware or Fortino's. If you watch for sales, aluminum liners can be purchased at extremely low cost. If you're going to hand cut, knock out something really quick and dirty if only to drive it into your head that you have to cut your gobo's upside down. As one poster pointed out, if you're working with gobo's in holders, you can always invert them and flip them over front to back / left to right. If you're cutting your gobo's from rectangular pieces of foil such that they're integral to the holder, obviously no relative motion is possible other than flipping them front to back equating to left to right.
As you're involved with theatre in Peterborough, you don't happen to know Al Tye?
Decades ago, I was best man at one of Al's marriages.
All the best.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
@Painterspoon
I believe several of us pointed out you can hand cut a gobo from a much larger blank so it serves as both a gobo and its own holder. Of course you loose the ability to rotate, invert, or shift the gobo relative to the holder but it's definitely the cheapest way to go if you're on an extremely tight budget. Local stores used to sell aluminum foil oven liners three to a package. The largest oven liners would provide enough flat aluminum to cut 9 or 12 self holding gobo's per liner / 27 to 36 per 3 pack of the largest liners. I'm suggesting the large, rectangular, shallow liners cooks use to collect grease drippings in the bottom of ovens. Being in Peterborough, you should be able to find affordable, light gauge, aluminum liners in any Home Hardware or Fortino's. If you watch for sales, aluminum liners can be purchased at extremely low cost. If you're going to hand cut, knock out something really quick and dirty if only to drive it into your head that you have to cut your gobo's upside down. As one poster pointed out, if you're working with gobo's in holders, you can always invert them and flip them over front to back / left to right. If you're cutting your gobo's from rectangular pieces of foil such that they're integral to the holder, obviously no relative motion is possible other than flipping them front to back equating to left to right.
As you're involved with theatre in Peterborough, you don't happen to know Al Tye?
Decades ago, I was best man at one of Al's marriages.
All the best.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

The gobo I'd have to make is very intricate and I don't want to spend hours and hours on something that is for sure going to fail. I appreciate the suggestions though. If I have any simpler ones I need to make, I'll try cutting them. Also, as it's summer, I don't have access to my lighting (and I don't really want to go to school!). I'm near Peterborough and teach in Bowmanville, so I know the name Al Tye, but I've never worked with him. There's a Sara who does theatre work and teaching as well...maybe a relation.
 
The gobo I'd have to make is very intricate and I don't want to spend hours and hours on something that is for sure going to fail. I appreciate the suggestions though. If I have any simpler ones I need to make, I'll try cutting them. Also, as it's summer, I don't have access to my lighting (and I don't really want to go to school!). I'm near Peterborough and teach in Bowmanville, so I know the name Al Tye, but I've never worked with him. There's a Sara who does theatre work and teaching as well...maybe a relation.
@Painterspoon It's straining what's left of my brain but I think Sara may be a daughter of Al from one of his several marriages. I recall Al's first wife died at quite an early age. Your mentiion of Bowmanville recalls happy memories for me. When I moved from Hamilton to Stratford to head their sound deparment in their festival's main stage in 1977, one of the first people I met there was their percussionist Michael Wood who'd just moved from his hometown of Bowmanville to begin his first contract playing in the Festival's orchestra loft. Michael remained with the Festival for something like 34 years before retiring from the Festival to spend more time teaching percussion at the University of Waterloo and performing live. Michael played EVERYTHING percussive from Tympani’s, xylophones and vibes to marimbas, orchestra bells (chimes) and his collection of rusty brake drums collected from auto wrecking yards from Bowmanville to London. Michael's specialty and love was playing 4 mallet vibes and especially in various jazz idioms. I met Michael as he'd often be having his own private rehearsals in the loft after midnight and I'd just as often be working late in my booth splicing open reel tapes 180 degrees across the then fully round festival's main venue. One late night / early morning I hit the 'God mike' and said good morning to Michael who'd neither met me nor heard the 'God mike' before as it was still pre-performance season and he froze mid beat thinking the voice of the all mighty had just spoke his name. We'd never met at that point and the booming echoing voice from overhead in what he thought was an empty building stopped the deeply religious Michael in his tracks. I repeated his name a couple of times expecting him to reply and I'd hear him in my monitor like a monitor mix engineer addressing a performer through his wedge monitor. After I'd spoke his name several times, Michael timidly spoke up asking who was calling him. A while later "God" suggested we meet in the green room one floor down for a can of pop from the vending machine. Michael eventually tired of commuting seasonally from Bowmanville, married his high school sweetheart and together they moved to Stratford and raised a family. Mike's young wife contracted a devastating disease leaving him with a home and three or four children in Stratford. Perhaps a decade passed before Mike met a widowed Stratford woman at his church and they married and built a huge new home in Stratford to house their combined families. From memory I believe Michael's personal web site is Percwood.com or .ca where he lists his credits and credentials and still promotes himself for solo, duo and trio jazz performances.
Theatre's truly a small world and even more so here in Canada.
Thank you @Painterspoon for your spurring my happy trip down memory lane.
All the best to you.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
Every time I see this post I think,"I see a little silhouetto of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?" Then I begin to wonder if Siri can read my thoughts.
 

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