Sorry for the delay on responding with a follow-up, I got hung up with finishing up events at the end of teh school year, and a pretty intense work schedule.
What I ended up doing was taking a small 400w DJ
fog machine I had sitting around and putting that below the "table" they were using for the potion bowl. I modified the
unit with an external single
button switch. I wired the
switch so that it would run the pump whenever it was pressed, even if the
unit wasn't preheated. I also put a light in the box so that when the
unit was up to temperature, the light would come on. This ensured that when it was time to have the burst of
fog, even if the
unit was reheating, the
fog would come out on
cue.
I put the
fog machine under the stool, with a elbow and 2"
pvc pipe to direct the
fog straight up. The pipe was hidden by the bowl on top of the stool.
It worked very well and gave a nice puff of
smoke that formed a pretty decent
mushroom cloud. There wasn't enough room under the stool to use a larger output
fog machine like my
rosco 1600 or 1700.
The
props crew/director didn't spend alot of time on the stool since they came up with the idea very last minute, so it didn't look as good as possible, but from the audience's viewpoint, it wasn't terrible. I wish I could have spruced up the rig a
bit more, but I just didn't have the time with everything else I had to do.
I also put my camera flash behind the bowl. The plan was to have the actress hit the
fog button, and the pilot
button on the flash at the same time. There should have been a flash of light in the princess's
face, then the
fog would rise, but the actress in charge of the buttons never was able to get the timing quite right. During rehearsals, she usually would hit the flash after the
fog had already risen. During the performances, she just never did the flash.
Unfortunately, they got a
bit carried away with the dry ice and put way too much in. The dry ice was dumped into a bowl of hot water when the potion was made, then the
mushroom cloud was supposed to rise. Because there was so much dry ice
fog falling on top of the
pvc pipe
outlet, the
mushroom cloud had a hard time making it up so it didn't look as compact and thick as it was without any obstructions.
The night i took these pictures was the closing night, so they went all out with the dry ice and it was thicker than any other night, so in this picture, you can barely see the
mushroom cloud. The other nights it came out a little
bit better, but still not as well as I would have liked.
Thanks for everyone's suggestions and input. It was greatly appreciated
Michael
. You could take a small computer fan and put it in the bottom of the upside down bucket. That way you have a bucket full of 
