The Giver

[carsonld]

For State One Act Competition we are doing The Giver, The show is a utopia community, Its hard to explain without giving anything away, But A problem we are haveing is the show is completyle black and white, This CANNOT be changed, but there is a scene where two boys are throwing a gray apple, And just for a moment it turns red, How can this be achieved? Also there is another scene where he goes into a library, At the beginning of this scene the library is in black and white, The it turns to color, How can this be achieved? And lastley this is part of the library scene where it automaticlly changes to a snowy hill where he is sledding the automaticlly changes to the library again, How can all of this be achieved?

 

[wolfman005]

You could use a projector for the snow scene.
As for the apple, you could make one half grey and the other half red and when the actors throw it, they can put some spin on it. I'm not sure how well it would work but that's all I can think of.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Smoky clear plastic apple with a red LED inside they can switch on?

White is relative and does not have to be no color. One of the techniques that Tom Skelton used was to establish a while for the show, and the audience is not overtly aware of how far from white it may be (unless a props person puts in a plain white appliance as happened on a show I was assisting him on). I don't know the show but it seem a monochromatic scheme would be fine and you may be able to get red with just a lighting change.

 

[TheaterEd]

If it was me, I would try to achieve these effects with the lighting. Unfortunately, in my experience working with high school one act competitions, you probably won't have much ability to set up specials or color washes. Step one is to let us know if you can adjust the lighting rig. I love Bill's idea for the LED apple, if you end up going that route be sure to post pictures!

 

[Tex]

I've seen it twice this year at competitions. We're allowed 4 lighting fixtures (not to exceed 1000w/ea.) that we control separately from the house rig. Both companies simply did short flashes of red for both the apple and the girl with red hair. It worked very well. I've found that it's usually easier to find a creative, theatrical way to do effects as opposed to trying to be realistic. For example, one of the companies I saw used a bike on a stand so that Jonas could pedal as he escaped. It worked OK. The other company used three actors for the bike, two holding the wheels and a third holding the handlebars. Jonas stood behind while the actors turned the wheels. It was a very creative way to do the same scene and worked much better.
Just some thoughts...