Alice in Wonderland

[csilvia9]

Hi, I am about to start production on Alice in Wonderland with a middleschool theater group. I have a question.
My director wants to stage Alice shrinking and growing. Does anyone have an idea how to do this. I was thinking of some kind of scrim with a shadow effect. If anyone has some ideas please let me know. I was also thinking of a scrim effect for the Cheshire cat as well. This will be my first time working with scrims. My budget is minimal but I do have a video projector at my disposal, and was thinking of that for some effects as well. If anyone has done Alice before please share your ideas.
Thank you
Christopher

 

[MarshallPope]

Perhaps rather than shrinking Alice, you can grow everything around her? You could project this, or if you have the ability to paint a scrim, have the surroundings (not very familiar with the show) painted in normal scale on them and then fade through to the jumbo scale set behind (at least, this makes works in theory).

 

[WideEyed]

Hey, we are actually about to open this show in my theater! What our set designer did for the doorway(the only part of our show where she changes sizes) is a video of it shrinking or growing. This works well enough, but then you also have to have it really specific for her lines and to have everything match up. Perhaps it would be better to have set pictures, and then video transitions between each. It would be a bit more time consuming and you would need to have someone with a remote to change the slides, but I think that would be a better option.

As to the Cheshire Cat, we have two S4's with a very narrow vertical shuttercut on opposite sides of the stage. With the scrim down and all lights behind it save those off, only the parts of the cat in the light are shown, so the cat appears to be floating. It is really cool!

 

[csilvia9]

Thank you for your input. Getting some good ideas. I am going to try a test with the projector I have. I am not sure how sharp or bright of an image I can get. That's why I was thinking of doing just her shadow growing and shrinking.

 

[csilvia9]

Hey, we are actually about to open this show in my theater! What our set designer did for the doorway(the only part of our show where she changes sizes) is a video of it shrinking or growing. This works well enough, but then you also have to have it really specific for her lines and to have everything match up. Perhaps it would be better to have set pictures, and then video transitions between each. It would be a bit more time consuming and you would need to have someone with a remote to change the slides, but I think that would be a better option.

Maybe I could achieve this with a power point type presentation so I can just click thorough the stages of the door transforming. Again depends on how well of an image I get with the projector I have. Thanks again. Would love to hear of some more effects you are using in your show!