Fake fire with fabric and compressed air

[CrisCole]

If it were me doing this effect, I'd use a flash pot or v-shooter. Perhaps with that, a sound effect, and lighting, you can make it look like fire.

 

[cdub260]

If it were me doing this effect, I'd use a flash pot or v-shooter. Perhaps with that, a sound effect, and lighting, you can make it look like fire.

A flashpot is a pyrotechnic effect and as such has very specific licensing requirements in order to ensure safe usage. Even with the appropriate license, there's no guarantee the local AHJ will allow the effect.

As for the V-Shooter idea, I'm not sure off the top of my head what a V-Shooter is.

 

[mamamo]

So, I'm curious- how did you do this?
I'm volunteering with a very, very low budget/low tech production of Princess Bride, and the fire swamp has us stumped.

 

[SHARYNF]

I think you could get the effect you want this way
If you made the silk flame with an inside funnel/pocket and then had the outside edges loose and floppy you could get the flame to pop up quickly. then have a fan to continue the effect, and use led lamps to get the orange and blue color The reason that just the straight silk takes so long to rise is that you are using the airflow over the fabric surface to create lift, where the inside pocket with a blast of air would get the flame to inflate and rise quickly and then the fan would take over to get the flapping that creates the flame

Sharyn

 

[Florple]

So, I'm curious- how did you do this?
I'm volunteering with a very, very low budget/low tech production of Princess Bride, and the fire swamp has us stumped.

I followed this following tutorial,
Build Your own LAW Rocket Launcher
but did not add the pvc launch tube section. This gave me a nozzle from which i could purge a 12 gram cartridge. The purging itself created enough smoke blown out at high speeds that no fabric or powder was necessary. Yellow lights in the right spots made it glow like fire.
The performance was canceled to to copyright claims but i built the effect anyway and if i have time i'll take a video of it working.