In a production of Beauty and the Beast, we had the rose petal drops (the single ones) on solenoids powered by a couple
dimmer packs. Then the light
cue would fire the
dimmer to pull a small piece of
wire that held the rose petals.
In that instance we needed a
ghost load because the
solenoid effectively didn't draw anything, but what perplexed me is the
ghost load we used was an
incandescent nightlight. I couldn't figure out how a 4w nightlight was nearly enough to help.
@macsound In 1991 or '92, the director of a local production of Peter Pan wanted small, 120 volt candle-flame, shaped neon lamps on the end of 10 or 12 ~3' lengths of thin matte black
wire laying (unobtrusively) around the set; his plan was for the scene to go to black then have 10 or 12 actorines clad in matte black, complete with matte black hoods with tiny slits for their eyes, enter,
pick up his
vision of Tinker Bell's buddies and wave them about; high, low, fast, slow, pause, hover, yada, yada; you've got the notion.
Props used 5 or 6" lengths of dowel with holes drilled longitudinally as handles then painted the handles matter black.
~3' lengths of piano
wire were glued into the handles. 18/2 HPN ran up the shiny piano
wire and was soldered directly to the medium candleabra bases of the neon candle flame lamps. Matte black
heat-shrink tubing covered the shiny piano
wire, including the 18/2 HPN, the
base of the lamp, and held the HPN and its shiny piano
wire support together.
The matte black 18/2 HPN carried on past the handle for ~25', passed through a
fuse holder housed in a single gang 1110 box, then terminated in a 20 Amp 3 contact male twist.
The male twist grounded the 1110 box; a blank single gang
cover was added, then the box and
cover were given a generous coating of matte black paint.
Standard 12/3 SO
fed the boxes; the boxes
lay unnoticed on the floor behind various pieces of scenery and the LD created a variety of
chase cues to illuminate the neon candle-flame lamps.
The
chase cues alternated between zero and 100% as the neon lamps wouldn't fire reliably at anything appreciably less.
The dimmers were
Strand CD80 2.4 K's, the neon lamps = ~0 load.
A 120 volt, 6S6 lamp wired in parallel, was covered by a dense layer of tape and formed part of each handle.
The choreographer choreographed a frenetic number. The actorines weren't exactly gentle with their little buddies, grabbing them, waving the excrement out of them, then tossing them crashing to the floor where they
lay waiting to be rescued, untangled, and reset behind the mid-stage black.
A 120 volt 6
Watt lamp reliably functioned as a workable
dummy load for Tinker Bell's (Or is that Tinker Belle's) 'steam punk' little pals.
The production ran two childrens' matinees daily from Christmas to New Years with a few evenings added: NONE of the abused 120 volt 6S6's were harmed in the name of art.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard