Beauty and the Beast Transformation White-out

Again, talk to your fire marshall, some buildings have sectional alarm systems. I worked at a theatre that you could turn off the stage only, but the house even stayed on. You can also become a fireman, or work with the fire department, if the marshall, or school, or whoever runs the building knows someone there is trained, and can put out a fire, they are a lot more willing to shut off an alarm system;), granted it takes some time, but it is worth it, for many reasons.
 
We only have two radiation smoke detectors on our stage, and ventillation detectors in the air ducts.
 
I set of a laser smoke detector with a ladder once...... They are the dumbest systems made.

Um... NO. They require you to think before doing. One laser detector or say thirty conventional detectors mounted on a roof that is inaccessible. Given that fire detectors need to be properly cleaned (off site) / replaced every 5 five years, 20% per year on a rotation, Laser systems are a good thing...
 
so on topic, as far as just the lighting goes, to make a white out more effective try to sneak down the overall lighting level as much as you can right before going to blinders@FL, it will make the effect have that much more impact.
 
Yes, that will work fairly well.
 
I think thats a load of BS...my school maintenance guy said the same thing, fog will set off smoke detectors. Now I'm not an expert on fire alarms, (wikipedia could change that :)) but I know for a fact that fog doesn't set them off. I was testing a fog machine on my stage and ended up filling the whole area with a thick fog. The grand was closed as well as the stage door and nothing got set off. Apparantly we have a "laser fire detector" as well, which works like a garage door safety laser. This wasn't set off or anything. Maybe we've got a faulty system, but I say it doesn't set them off.

Some fire alarms will be set off with the fog. Contact the fire marshall before you attempt anything.

With that said, I suggest a few strobes and fog.
 
Well, I just signed up for CB, so I guess a bit of background is in order.

I started out as a professional magician many years ago, then went to college and grad school to learn set design, then spent fifteen years in architecture, then back to theater as a designer, which is where I am now.

A couple of years ago we were planning to do B&B, and of course my old-magician instincts kicked in. But as a set designer who wanted to create a magical effect for the audience, as opposed to an overblown special effect, I was planning to cover the transition mostly with careful choreography: the other characters "dancing" around the Beast as he did a quick change. Of course, we had a real choreographer on the team. One pin spot from above, right on him in the middle of the swirl, and a series of tight cross fades right on the group.

Voila! A magical effect that tied right into the story. We never did produce the show, but I filed the idea away for future use.

Have fun with it!
 
...An <un-named> magic act, currently uses a Lightning Strikes!, I believe 20K strobe to achieve this. Way out of your budget, and don't even think of trying little disco-type strobes, though 10 or so Martin Atomic 3000 strobes could work, but still beyond your means, I suspect.

WOAH!!!

500,000w???? Just out of curiosity, what kind of installation would even be able to handle such power requirements??? (It's 2100A btw)
 
WOAH!!!

500,000w???? Just out of curiosity, what kind of installation would even be able to handle such power requirements??? (It's 2100A btw)

Yes but the specs say a 400A is all (!) you need. It's only 2k1A for 1/24 sec or thereabouts...

Since Derek was the one who mentioned it, it'll be someone in Vegas. 'Nuff said...

Afterthought: No X, You and I use half the amps for the same effect as the yanks, so it's ONLY really 1kA peak, 200A continuous... From memory the Melbourne Commonwealth Games ran on 3 6kA 3ph changeovers...They may have had 1000 movers though...
 
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I was going to do the lighting design for B&B but it didn't happen, such is theatre.
I was going to use a 575W mover with a rotating glass gobo and a rotating metal gobo to cover the actor doing the transformation, using the remote focus to morph the gobos and a colour change effect with the two colour wheels. This effect would be looped for the duration of the transformation.
So instead of relying on a white out effect or a strobing effect, it would be a transformation that would allow the audience to see the actor but not clear enough to see what was happening. The Beast's area lighting would have to be faded out so only the mover's effects were visible, the rest of the stage and Beauty would still be lit.

Has anyone tried anything like this?
 
We used a strobe light during the AHS production of BatB and depending on the origin of your light, you may want to employ the use of fog. We used a small strobe light, an American DJ brand, Model S-81 Mini Strobe which did quite well. During transformations someone got up behind what was the west wing or the secret stairs and went from slow to fast back to slow and off. It looked like yuck though if there wasn't fog... kinda just looked like the Beast was raving in an odd sort of way.
 
i think we did that exact same thing. we attached small strobe lights all over our platforms/west and east wing and staicase. we also used a fog machine and when i got sorta thick, beast rolled off out of the window and changed and then as the fog machine was cooling down he got back into position on the platform. it actually looked pretty cool. beast just had to make sure to roll off when there was enought fog.
 

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