Turning Water Into Blood

Kharve2

New Member
Our upcoming production of Macbeth wants to have a water feature that needs to suddenly turn blood red.

We will be using a pump to circulate water to the fountain head. We then would need to tint the water. My problem is how to do that. The current thought is to pump concentrated tint into the recirculating water to make the shift. The question is what should my tint concoction be made out of?

The current thought is pool party dye but we are not able to achieve a dark red. We will be dying something to the order of 10 to 15 gallons of water so the tint concentrate needs to be strong. Of course we need something that is non staining (actors clothes) and non food based as we are doing 6 shows a week for 5 weeks.

Any thoughts?
 
The second issue (staining) might be harder than the first. I assume what the audience sees is only the flowing water in the fountain and not the pool, therefore you do not have to change the whole 15 gallons, just what is coming out of the fountain. I would think a pair of electric valves feeding the pump to switch it's source from the sump in the pool to a second hidden source such as a 5 gallon bucket of pre-dyed water.
 
The second issue (staining) might be harder than the first. I assume what the audience sees is only the flowing water in the fountain and not the pool, therefore you do not have to change the whole 15 gallons, just what is coming out of the fountain. I would think a pair of electric valves feeding the pump to switch it's source from the sump in the pool to a second hidden source such as a 5 gallon bucket of pre-dyed water.

We are slated to run a clear water effect for 30 mins and then run it blood red for another hour and a half.
 
We are slated to run a clear water effect for 30 mins and then run it blood red for another hour and a half.
@Kharve2 Have you considered running only clear water and illuminating your fountain from directly above with an intense, blood red, down light positioned such that it's located behind a border keeping the source out of your patron's sight lines? The fixture's beam would need to be kept off of actors so as not to reveal its location and to avoid shadowing.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
You want to mix down lighting with up lighting. And I would even say do the double pump with the highest concentrate red you can get.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FLXU6HS/?tag=controlbooth-20

You could go so far as even trying a UV dye to pop it. Reading through the QA it doesn’t stain. But I haven’t tried this product so use at your own risk.


If you want to stick to a more theatre professional service Wildfire is always the way to go. It seems they do dye now

http://www.wildfirefx.com/wildfire_net/ProductDesc.aspx?code=180&type=1&eq=&desc=LuminescentWaterDye

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Doesn’t look like they do red but color mixing looks like a thing. Again don’t know about the staining.
 
On the staining front, I would try to emulate stage blood formulas which typically contain a detergent per costumer request (surely several recipes available on CB). I think it was just a clear laundry detergent last time I did it, but I know some use dish soap too. Keep the dye in solution until the costume gets laundered post-show is the idea.

Lighting could play a role, yes, but perhaps also something in the water to change the transparency as much or more than the color. Water under deep red light probably looks more like fruit punch than blood, which I say having never actually tried the effect.
 
On the staining front, I would try to emulate stage blood formulas which typically contain a detergent per costumer request (surely several recipes available on CB). I think it was just a clear laundry detergent last time I did it, but I know some use dish soap too. Keep the dye in solution until the costume gets laundered post-show is the idea.
Lighting could play a role, yes, but perhaps also something in the water to change the transparency as much or more than the color. Water under deep red light probably looks more like fruit punch than blood, which I say having never actually tried the effect.
@Colin @Kharve2 I appreciate what you're saying regarding clear laundry detergent from the perspective of staining and removal. If the water is being pumped, or even when it's raining into the surrounding catch basin, I'd be concerned about frothing and foaming like when passersby toss soap or detergent into your city's City Hall fountain. Another thought; anything slightly cloudy in the clear water would receive colored lights and reflect their colors better than clear water.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
@Colin @Kharve2 I'd be concerned about frothing and foaming like when passersby toss soap or detergent into your city's City Hall fountain.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

Yep. There are anti-foaming additives available for this purpose for fountains, pools, hot tubs, fish ponds. Some must be skin safe. I don't know if they'd impact the detergent's effectiveness though. Or, detergent made for high efficiency washers foams less, as does cold water vs warm, and salt water. You need to increase surface tension, which again might work against what the soap is supposed to do for you - I don't know.
 
ive got nothing new to add, but when you figure it out can you post a video and method description? Seems like a good trick to have in my back pocket for the future..
 
Agreed I would love to see what you come up with.
 
I would just posit one question: How far away is your audience? Even if you achieve a nice deep red when you are standing next to the feature, is it even going to read to the audience at all? Is the water falling over a white background or something grey and stone-like? I have just found that blood effects in general need to be way bigger than you think unless the audience is right on top of the action. Point being, before you commit to extra pumps or lots of dye and developing processes for changing the water and cleaning up, make sure the effect actually reads under stage light or you will have spent an awful lot of time and money on an effect that might go completely un-noticed.
 
Re: foaming and anti foaming additives-

Dish soap (washing up liquid for those across the pond) foams. Dishwasher and laundry detergent are designed to foam minimally, so as to not overflow the machines. I would think that soaps intended for the high efficiency machines would be even less foaming. That being said, they're not designed for plopping into a fountain for a period of time. Trial runs are needed.

In the case of de-foaming, a weak acid will remove bubbles. I had to google this back when I managed actor housing as part of my ASM responsibilities. Apple juice or vinegar will kill the bubbles from the dish soap in the dishwasher error (1 cup added to the dishwasher, then run, should the need ever arise). Both are not only skin safe, but edible, so there's that. Also your soaps are available in perfume and dye free, same as the ones wardrobe has to use for tender actor skin.

I'm also dyeing (get it?) to know how this turns out!
 
Not knowing what the fountain looks like or whether it's already made, I think a combination of downlight and a transparent bottom with red LEDs would work. As previously asked, we don't know the scale of the production or whether it will be seen from 1, 3 or 4 sides. And this might be a nit-picky kind of detail but blood is much more viscous (thicker) than water. An effective transition from water to blood could involve pumping the water in the basin out as the thicker blood mixture begins to flow (not spray) from the top of the fountain. It would be a bit of a horror movie effect but the transition would be unmistakable.
 
Of course if we are really being realistic, blood tends to Chang color as well as crust pretty quickly.
 

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