Aurora Borealis

[SHARYNF]

Living in the land of the aurora, you might want to look at some video footage

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXs6Sh0DKs[/media]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icugqEEOgkg&NR=1

Basically when it is being seen the effect is very different from the static photo graphs. It can best be described as a plusating curtain, that fades in and out. Colors tend to vary.

I would think that actual video projection would be an option
or using some downward and upward pointing gell'd pars or led pars that you cycle in a rippling effect. there is a very definite curved curtain type of effect that is quite dramatic when seeing it live
it all happens a LOT slower than in the video clip

It is hard to explain and a lot of the effects that I have seen really don't look like the real thing. First of all it does not occur in a circular pattern but rather as I said like a curtain

I had an artist do an installation to simulate the effect in a venue once. what he used was a series of clear plastic rods hanging in a curving pattern and then a set of color changing pars giving the lighting effect
That worked for a permanent install but not very practical for just a simple set

I tend to always tend toward video projection, so an option would be to project the effect onto a black drape



Sharyn

 

[MNBallet]

So any updates of things tried yet? photos? My show to make the Northern Lights isn't until October. I had an idea yesterday of trying some cheap painters plastic (sold in a big roll, very, very thin stuff .31 mil, 12' wide strips) and doing vertical strips of it in front of a black curtain. The stuff is so thin that normal air flow will move it around slowly, but is clear so all we'll see is mostly the black curtain. Throw a few LED units and the plastic might pick up a "sheen" of color that slowly dances. Anyone have access to a thater to try this out, cause I don't. Would love to see if this works.

Ken Pogin
Production Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet

 

[edmedmoped]

We had to make the Northern Lights for our summer production (Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy), because one of the books is called Northern Lights...

I think we did pretty well. At the beginning (way before programming and rigging started), we watched a video of a theatre that was doing the same production, and their go at the Northern Lights. Compared to ours, theirs was pathetic! There's was just 8 or 10 spots moving around randomly on the cyc.

We had a day to devise something, so we put two MAC 250+s backstage left and right, side-on to the cyc. They were cycling green, blue, purple and probably something else, and we also had some green and blue PAR cans on the cyc.

Just realised that wasn't really much help hah. I was busy with recording sounds and rigging the strobe and smoke on that day.

I'll try and find the video of the other one I mentioned.

 

[MNBallet]

Good news!
I tried out my idea of the very thin painters plastic today. First off, it didn't look good front lit, so I tried directly from the bottom. Didn't look quite right either. So, I moved it back a bit and BINGO! backlit was the way to go. It looked so real as the plastic swayed around, the light danced among the cuves and billiows. Of course I had only one led can on the floor as an experiment. I'll have over 16 hung from above for the show. I also thought that seeing the plastic directly will not look too good, so I'm going to throw a scrim in front. Pictures and a youtube video from the show will be posted in early to mid Novemeber.

Ken Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet

 

[Dalamar]

Hey folks, I may be out of my league here, so feel free to let me know.


But why is it that, throughout the thread, I kept thinking the words "diluted flourescent paint" added to lighting effects?

From the first post on, I'm thinking that we shouldn't discard the simple yet quite efficient invisible UV paint enhencement.

Am I way off the track here?

 

[edmedmoped]

Found the video I mentioned three posts above:

Northern Lights

Fail.

EDMEDIT: Website no longer exists

 

[MNBallet]

well, my Northern Lights was a huge sucess!

I hung 28 LED units (16 10mm type and 6 3watt type,) all in a row on the line right in front of the cyc all pointed straight down, and 6 3watt from the front. Then on the next line up I hung some painters plastic. at first I did two layers of it, but cut it down to one for the show. Then I had a scrim in front of the plastic. I had a hard time keeping the platsic from static cling to the drop cause they were so close. I would have wanted more room but couldn't get it. I just had 2 crew memebers then stand in the wings with fans and had them move the fan around to keep it from sticking to the cyc or scrim. I've got to say that the effect was very real! The LED's were on a random program I had running on a laptop (AMDJ MyDMX).

The review said this about it: " ....ending with Acker (a dancer) moving in and out of shadows, momentarily silhouetted. In a piece about the aurora borealis, I would have liked to have seen Gardner (the Artistic Director) take more advantage of such dramatic

lighting.



I'll post a link to a video I'll put up on youtube when I get the video from our professional that taped it.

Kenneth Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet

 

[carrot]

Wow! I'm excited to see the movie of your Aurora! It sounds like it was awesome.