DIY haze/fog/mist curtain in a doorway (with projection)?

[Stuart R]

Hello Brain Trust,

We're doing a production of Disney's "The Descendants" that calls for characters to go through a "portal" that transports them to another location. The set features a large squarish arch (see illustration) that we'd like to use as the "doorway."

Might it be possible to rig some kind of mist or haze or fog contraption in the door header, which, when run, would fill the doorway with white or gray swirly mist onto which we could project a swirling lighting effect? It's fine if the "mist" spills/drifts/dissipates so long as the weird light effect is visible within the doorframe.

If you're a fan of the old 1960s Star Trek, the effect is sort of like when Kirk et al visit the planet with the "Guardian of Forever," a huge rock arch with an open center filled with swirling fog that the character jump through to go back in time.

The arch moves around the stage, so we'll need to fit the apparatus inside it. We can get it power, but we can't run a giant dryer hose to a full-size dry ice machine in the wings (for example).

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[jtweigandt]

If you have room to hide a crew member, I have used the cheap haloween grade foggers on a beefy inverter and deep cycle battery.
I had Scrooges bed floating on a cloud of mist as it moved about the stage in whatever version of A Christmas Carol it was.
for fog distribution, flexible pipe closely matching the output nozzle of the fogger, routed to relatively small bore pvc pipe with multiple holes drilled
distributes pretty fast and smooth. The reason for cheap haloween grade is lower wattage. If you don't mind a drop cord, you can go dmx and wall power.

 

[macsound]

I've done something like this for urinetown where there was a piece of 2.5" PVC with holes cut into it that was set into a fiberboard trough. The trough allowed the fog to flow over the edge but not spray directly out of the PVC
Then the fog machine was pumped into a plastic tub with dry ice.
We then placed a variable speed fan into the pipe to create enough, but not too much volume pushing out of the PVC holes and sucking from the tub.

The tub with dry ice and variable speed fan was important because we needed the volume of the tub filled, but the fog coming out of the PVC needed to be thick and slow moving, not forceful and fast moving.