Dropping a Duck?

[jcslighting]

I am doing a production of Beauty and the Beast and I need to do the duck drop in the opening song "Belle" where Gaston shoots the duck and it drops from above. My question is simple...what is the best way to accomplish this? Some form of 'slip knot', some catch, an electric solenoid?

The rubber duck probably weighs a little over a pound or so, we have a fly system so it can easily be re-rigged each show from the deck. I was thinking of rigging it behind an existing teaser.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

 

[josh88]

You could probably search for almost Maine, and find some options as it has a shoe that drops. I would probably build a small box or shelf you could attach to a batten. Build it with a latch you can pull with a string that drops the bottom out or something along those lines. When it's time, pull the string, latch releases and duck drops.


Via tapatalk

 

[MarshallPope]

I've worked on a production where we had to drop a pink flamingo. We used a loose pin hinge with a little bit of elastic cord attaching the pin to the hinge and snapping it back into place after the drop. We put a little wire loop on the bird that hung on the pin. It worked pretty well. In a run of ~45 shows it only failed once, and that was a very flukey thing where the wire loop somehow got caught on the hinge itself.

 

[venuetech]

we used a simple tie line with an eye on one end around the duck. with the duck in place the eye was pinned with a dowel. tie line along the batten to an off stage position. a solid tug pulled the dowel out from the eye and dropped the duck.