Making it rain (On Stage)

[Russell Reed]

Hey everyone,

Happy New Year! Hope 2019 brings all of us new toys and projects to work on.

Our school is currently working on Lord of the Flies. We want to make it rain on the stage. We are doing the show in the round, so real water is the way we want to go because of the distance to the audience. We have approval on the safety side of it, just thinking logistics at this point. How do we make water coming down look like real rain and not just streams of water? The goal is to make it rain on an 8'x8' section of the stage. The original idea was to have 2 PVC pipes that are randomly piped in a square with random holes drilled in it and, to control them with electric solenoids and just to pulse back and forth between the two of them. Not sure how well that would work. As far as the draining goes the stage is hollow underneath and we have the approval to drill a hole and we were thinking about raking the section of the stage that gets rained on towards the hole and have it drain to a tub underneath.

Open to suggestions!

Thanks,
Russell

 

[RonHebbard]

Hey everyone,

Happy New Year! Hope 2019 brings all of us new toys and projects to work on.

Our school is currently working on Lord of the Flies. We want to make it rain on the stage. We are doing the show in the round, so real water is the way we want to go because of the distance to the audience. We have approval on the safety side of it, just thinking logistics at this point. How do we make water coming down look like real rain and not just streams of water? The goal is to make it rain on an 8'x8' section of the stage. The original idea was to have 2 PVC pipes that are randomly piped in a square with random holes drilled in it and, to control them with electric solenoids and just to pulse back and forth between the two of them. Not sure how well that would work. As far as the draining goes the stage is hollow underneath and we have the approval to drill a hole and we were thinking about raking the section of the stage that gets rained on towards the hole and have it drain to a tub underneath.

Open to suggestions!

Thanks,
Russell

@Russell Reed Will you recirculate the same water pumping it from your tub back up to your pipes? How large is your tub?? Is your water going to fall straight down due to gravity or will you thrust it up from your pipes and let it fall with more natural variations or will you have a fan or two blowing it sideways from a wing??? Can I assume you'll cross-light it for greatest effect and possibly with motion wheels????
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[Russell Reed]

@Russell Reed Will you recirculate the same water pumping it from your tub back up to your pipes? How large is your tub?? Is your water going to fall straight down due to gravity or will you thrust it up from your pipes and let it fall with more natural variations or will you have a fan or two blowing it sideways from a wing??? Can I assume you'll cross-light it for greatest effect and possibly with motion wheels????
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

@RonHebbard , we were hoping to recirculate the water (looking into pumps and paths for the pipes to come back). The tub size has not been established. Was thinking it would go straight down. No clue how we are going to light it... Just trying to figure the basics of what receptacle the water will come out of first.


Thanks for all the help and support!

 

[Amiers]

Recirculating will be hard if it’s dropping on a stage with all the dirt but that’s only part of it.

I’m a pro fan of the rainstick method. Tilt the stick to one side and then the other to make rain.

They have beads or beans you will have actual water.

Make a PVC grid above of whatever your budget allows, drill holes in the sides and tops and only a few on the bottom. Pump water in and shake that grid to give you your effect.

 

[RonHebbard]

Recirculating will be hard if it’s dropping on a stage with all the dirt but that’s only part of it.

I’m a pro fan of the rainstick method. Tilt the stick to one side and then the other to make rain.

They have beads or beans you will have actual water.

Make a PVC grid above of whatever your budget allows, drill holes in the sides and tops and only a few on the bottom. Pump water in and shake that grid to give you your effect.

@Russell Reed Like @Amiers said and then play with lighting. Cross-lit from one wing. Add a homemade motion wheel using aluminum oven liner, an X-Acto knife, coat hanger wire to support, flat black aerosol spray paint and a very slow geared motor from Edmund Scientific (If they're still in existence) If you've the facilities and budget, add a gobo rotator and suitable gobo. This combination will periodically interrupt your cross-light affording a better effect than a constant light source. Apollo and Rosco's sites should give you ideas for motion wheels and gobos.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

If you haven't done rain on stage before, beware how loud it is.

 

[RonHebbard]

If you haven't done rain on stage before, beware how loud it is.

@Russell Reed As with many things, budget can help. As long as you have the budget, space and facilities, bladder tanks can time shift water supply noise. Gravity fed tanks operate pretty quietly as well. Layers of saturated soft cloth can help silence the landing. Your director may not want it too quiet as the sound of falling rain is part of making the effect convincing.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[bobgaggle]

This is an interesting effect for me. Every time I've done it, the artsy folks want a rain curtain, so the actors and scenery stay upstage and dry while looking like they're getting rained on. You want an 8x8 square to get rain. I assume you want actors to get drenched. A PVC run with holes up is usually the way to go for the random drips, but I wonder if PEX with holes up might be more suitable for your application. You can lay out a zig zag pattern on the grid like they do for radiant flooring and get good rain coverage of your footprint. Since you could easily use up to 100' of pipe just for the "shower head", multiple entry points from a manifold would help you get even rain from all around the pattern, keeping all runs of feeder pipe the same length.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

And if pulling from a tap, plan on heating it a little. We almost put a hot water tank at top of stage for ALley Theatre - ended up with just domestic supply and a 220/50 amp plug for a portable water heater.

I understand the noise is part of the effect, and do nothing if no dialog, but if you want to hear an actor speak, be prepared for lots of matting of some sort on the floor. Plastic or similar won't do it.

 

[Van]

I posted this earlier in another thread but I had great success making 'Showers' on stage for "Take Me Out" using Landscape sprinkler heads.

Originally I planned on installing a single valve then feeding a PVC pipe with multiple shower heads. Of course the issue arose that once the valve shut off the water had to drain from the pipe and since there was no head pressure the heads just dripped for half of forever.
Using PVC and drilled holes creates a couple issues 1. the pipe has to be completely level with no dips. any low spots will cause the water to pool and result in slow response. 2. PVC with holes tends to act like lamps wired in Series; instead of gradually growing dimmer they decrease in volume and pressure. This is one reason why Fire sprinklers systems use all sort of sizes of pipes.

I found that using multiple irrigation control valves like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Rain-Bird-3-4-in-FPT-In-Line-Valve-CP075/202078357 with shower heads mounted directly to them allowed not only for individual control but for much less dribbling once the valve was triggered.

I built a 24v effects box that allowed me to select various combinations of sprinkler head for the different scenes. I think, with sufficient height, and if you properly space out a grid of sprinkler heads, you could easily make a rain effect look quite real.
I used 2 50 gallon Hot water heaters and rain the system preshow to get as much hot water into the pipes as I could. Naked actors, taking showers onstage took exception to the really cold water hitting them in the scene.
I was not, nor did I want to recycle water. One reason our guys were using soap and that would be gross. two, you'd need a hell of a pump to supply the volume and pressure necessary to maintain the trick AND keep head pressure on the sprinkler valves. The valves default to 'Closed' when there is no current applied, but they require sufficient head pressure from the water to remain closed. I would also guess using recycled water would introduce enough grit and grime to clog up the valves and Sprinkler heads.

 

[bobgaggle]

I found that using multiple irrigation control valves like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Rain-Bird-3-4-in-FPT-In-Line-Valve-CP075/202078357 with shower heads mounted directly to them allowed not only for individual control but for much less dribbling once the valve was triggered.

I built a 24v effects box that allowed me to select various combinations of sprinkler head for the different scenes. I think, with sufficient height, and if you properly space out a grid of sprinkler heads, you could easily make a rain effect look quite real.

To clarify, you used a fan type sprinkler head that shoots water 360 degrees? What kind of radius did you get using city pressure? Also, did you run from the heaters to a manifold and out to each valve, or did you daisy chain them together?

 

[Van]

I used the valves to control water to conventional shower heads. For rain I would run down the pressure or restrict the flow on the output side ot the valve a bit to get drippier rain. I ran all the heads off a singl 'manifold' made of a square 'grid' of pipe that was fed at each end, in an attempt to avoid the series effect.

 

[DeenT]

Our resident theatre company put on a performance of Singing in the Rain in which they needed to have rain on stage. We built a large platform that covered about half of the stage. It was coated in water seal paint and all of the creases were flex taped. After a few test runs, it rarely dripped through. The platform was slightly angled so all of the water would run to a drain and underneath was a bin that we would empty out after the run.

To make it rain, we used sprinkler heads like the ones installed in every business for their fire sprinkler system. They were connected to a pipe that we attached to a batten. At the end of the pipe we connected a hose which ran down from the batten to a pump and a large plastic barrel of water. It looked and felt just like rain every time. The sprinklers covered the perfect amount of area to never go past the platform we had made as well.