A Mushroom Cloud to "wow the audience"

[RonHebbard]

My lovely ex fiancee created exactly this for a shadow puppet 3D show back about 5 years. The difference was that it was for three weeks and she used a cardbard box rather than a plastic bin and operated the membrane by hand. Worked like a dream in a shadow puppet show. (Much smaller scale of course)

I always giggle when you refer to your wife as your "lovely ex fiance". The first time I read it, some months ago, I admit it gave me pause but now that I've become more used to reading you I readily comprehend but still giggle none the less.
Good morning Tony. @Logos
Good night from Ron Hebbard.
Toodleoo!

 

[Logos]

I always giggle when you refer to your wife as your "lovely ex fiance". The first time I read it, some months ago, I admit it gave me pause but now that I've become more used to reading you I readily comprehend but still giggle none the less.
Good morning Tony. @Logos
Good night from Ron Hebbard.
Toodleoo!

Yeah, its fun. I got the idea indirectly from an elderly man who was a good friend who introduced his wife (his only wife of 50 years) as "This is my first wife Pauline."

 

[RonHebbard]

Yeah, its fun. I got the idea indirectly from an elderly man who was a good friend who introduced his wife (his only wife of 50 years) as "This is my first wife Pauline."

Sort of reminiscent of amateur radio / ham speak / Morse code abbreviations where YL's are young ladies and XYL's are, shall we say, more mature ladies.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[ruinexplorer]

a Zombie Burlesque show

Man, I've had the coupon that I picked up at the Zombie Apocalypse store for months and have never seen the show. Maybe I should take some time to do so. Maybe when @gafftaper and his lovely ex-fiancé are in town. :^)

 

[gafftaper]

I've seen Boiling water poured into Liquid nitrogen a couple of times and it's not a perfect mushroom cloud, but it's not a bad fake. Put the liquid nitrogen in a tall container and you get a huge, instant explosion straight up. They just had it on America's Got Talent a couple weeks ago. Skip to the 5:00 point.

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Maybe when @gafftaper and his lovely ex-fiancé are in town. :^)

Yeah when we hit town tomorrow my lovely ex-fiancé is going to be looking for Cirque, not Zombies. Although given the current temperature we may end up zombies by Saturday.

On the other hand if the coupon is good until November I'm sure we could put together a party of the guys here to go.

 

[Amiers]

That looks like a winner. You can throw a trash can on wheels drop a ballon from the grid and let it rip.

 

[bobgaggle]

I'm a little late to the party, but artistically, a 12' mushroom cloud is going to look kinda dumb next to a 6' dancer unless your scenery is forced perspective and its supposed to look like the bomb went off a mile away. Could you talk the director into doing a huge explosion? meaning, you see the column of gas rising up (like that nitrogen video) and the initial blast cloud at the ground (ideally with dry ice, but you could use a fog chiller), but the actual mushroom cap, in scale, would be way higher than the building so we can't see it? Saves you a lot of headache trying to make a mushroom of fog, and the effect would be bigger/more grandiose...

picture any space movie when they're doing a re entry, the zoomed out shot isn't that intense, but then they always cut to a close up of the heat shield glowing and flaming. That shot is always more intense, so with this idea, you're bringing the audience a lot closer to ground zero, so close you're immersed in the explosion, rather than watching it from a distance.

 

[cadcoke5]

I recall accidentally making a mushroom cloud on a small scale. Like an earlier poster, it was for a puppet show. Not having a fog machine, I improvised by putting a little talcum powder in a small bottle, and then feeding a short length of 1/2" dia tubing in and out of the bottle. By blowing on it, I could make a small cloud of "smoke". It actually was hard to not make a mushroom cloud.

The air-cannon type of device is not ideal for forming a mushroom cloud, because it tends to shoot out a fairly fast moving ring the size of the hole in the device. You would want something very slow moving and probably wider. So, aside from the space on the floor you would need, I don't think that is a good direction to go. I suspect that a cloth drop, perhaps with battens to hold out the shape, or a netted drop is the way to go. Just pile it onto the stage floor, and lift as the cloud would lift up. Add some projected light effect to the cloth to provide the general effect of a swirling cloud. If it is a netted drop, then you can back light. If the light source is near the drop, then any stray light going beyond the sides of the drop may even add an effect like of radiation streaming out from the cloud. If you don't have an effects light that will turn the pattern, even a pair of simple linenbach projectors, cross-fading may be enough. Or a pair of ellipsoids with leaf gobos in them.

I also like the fan effect that gafftapegreenia mentioned. Though, you will probably need to start the fans before the actual explosion to get them up to speed soon enough.

-Joe