Ideas For “The Sparrow” Effects

Hi,
My school is thinking of putting on a production of “The Sparrow” (2007). I just received the script today and haven’t read all of it but from what I can tell the play is full of lots of cool effects including objects flying and floating in the air, as well as the main character flying. I do lighting but typically at my school every techie pitches in with effects like this so i was wondering if any of you had some ideas about how we could pull them off. Thank you!
 
A welcome to the Booth!
B. I'm not familiar with the show, however, let me be the first to say don't fly anyone until you have hired a competent Specialist such as Flying by Foy, Trapeze World, or one of the other nationally reputed licensed riggers. If you search here for "flying' you will see the hundreds of horror stories, and recommendations; Take them to heart.

Flying little objects can be easy, something as simple as rigging trick line, pneumatics or tons of other little tricks. After you've digested the script a little, post individual questions or ask for critiques of your ideas. Personally, I try to not tell someone how to do something <other than safety concerns> but tend to nudge in the right direction.
 
Flying a person as in suspending someone in air definitely sounds horrible. We were thinking more along the lines of choreography? But we will have to discuss further.

Thank you for those tips and pointing me in the right direction! I’ll be sure to do some research and discuss options after reading the script more thoroughly. Some inspiration for this play seems to be drawn from the movie Carrie so maybe I can look into the effects from that movie.

Thanks again : )
 
In Christmas Carol one year we made the "spirits" air propelled pingpong balls with blacklight painted chiffon.
The 1.5" PVC was mounted to a piece of non moving set so we could practice the trajectory ahead of time and predict where it could safely land. a 5" piece of PVC was attached after a 1/4 turn valve and had a bike tire fill valve and guage on it.
Before show, the tanks were filled with a predetermined psi of air. At the correct moment, a tech would quickly open the valve. The air release was loud, but helped the sound effect of flying ghosts.
In later years, the valves were replaced by solenoids and triggered remotely.

The ping pings balls were nice because they're so light, they won't hurt anyone because as they fly with the fabric, they have so much resistance that they decelerate incredibly quickly.
 

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