WORK Making Pyrotechnic Helmet

[spoonhead1a1]

looking for experienced pyrotechnician to help create a helmet for the band anticlone.

the mask will expel bursts of flames from multiple points and will need to be made safely by experienced pyrotechnicians and certified properly to be safe to use on stage

[ImagineerTom]

You won't get such a device made and sent to you to use whenever you want, something like this will require significant ongoing maintenance and operation to stay safe - ie this is something you need to be looking at as a rental / service contract with a specific (experienced) operator contracted to be with you at each performance. This is the sort of stuff that ends up costing a lot of money (a few grand to set up, hundreds of pounds per performance) and which will also require a fairly significant wedge of paperwork completing for each and every venue you want to use it in.

[Brian]

...and certified properly to be safe to use on stage

 

That's the sticking point. Without a 'competent' person around to prepare the effect each time and to have the authority to say 'no, not in this venue', you'll not get that. And that person is going to need to have proper insurance for such an effect.

 

Rough estimates...

 

Design and build...£2k

Consumables per performance...£50

Pyrotechnician per performance, including travel and accommodation...£250

[dbuckley]

I don't know how the UK works anymore: Are there courses member(s) of the crew could take to get a document that demonstrates one is a competent person? Here in NZ one takes courses and exams which lead to a certification as an "approved handler", which is the legal requirement to do pyro.

[Stuart91]

It might be worth having a quick chat with a representative sample of typical upcoming venues. Work out what is going to be required to meet the venue's rules, how much it will cost, etc. There's no point in going to this kind of expense if it is going to be banned from 80% of the dates on your next tour or you can't afford to keep it on the road.

 

From a quick Google, the band certainly seem to be going places, the advice would be very different for an up and coming act playing pubs and clubs...

[Ynot]

Sadly, this smacks of a conversation that likely started "Wouldn't it be cool if................."

What's cool and practical (and safe) is not always compatible with each other.

 

This to me sounds like a VERY risky avenue to consider for all the reasons above.

[ImagineerTom]

I don't know how the UK works anymore: Are there courses member(s) of the crew could take to get a document that demonstrates one is a competent person? Here in NZ one takes courses and exams which lead to a certification as an "approved handler", which is the legal requirement to do pyro

Since this is definitely a custom designed, not-off-the-shelf piece of equipment there's not going to be an off-the-shelf course anyone could be sent on to suddenly become "competent" with it so no.

This is exactly the sort of thing I deal with in my day-job so I'll give a synopsis of what's involved just so that anyone searching for this in the future has a better understanding of the situation.

Actually designing and building a mask that shoots fire would cost around £2-4k depending on precisely what technology is involved and precisely how many jets in how many different places you want.

You would also need a nomex (other fireproof clothing is available) under-skin for the performer's head and ideally upper body since in the event of any malfunction/accident that is where the fire will end up. A cheap skin will cost you a few hundred pounds heading up to a few thousand depending on how lightweight, movable and durable you need it to be.

The clothing the performer wears over this fire suit (ie their "costume") would need to be remade in materials that are able to withstand close proximity to heat (ie no synthetics, they'll melt) and ideally in an inherently fire-retarding material.

The performer's precise choreography will need to be locked down, rehearsed extensively and it's quite likely the costumes of other performers on the stage at that time and/or some of your other props would have to be remade in fire-proof materials. Any changes to the choreography or props would require this process to be repeated which means if you're touring to a 300 capacity one night and a 20,000 festival the next night you're going to be re-rehearsing this specific sequence at least twice that week.

You'd need a suitably trained and experienced technician who is in charge of this fire mask, has the ability to over-ride it and has the power (and respect from the band/manager/promotor) to make the decision not to fire the mask if at any time they feel it's inappropriate or unsafe. We could train up someone with existing pyro experience (as could anyone suitably experienced to make a prop like this); whoever it is will not be cheep though as they would have an important safety role in the show and would have to have lots of liability insurance. This person would also typically have to do the equivalent of one complete day of work to provide all the paperwork, permissions, risk assessments and compliance statements required to use this prop at each performance you undertake. Many venues would not allow you to use this prop at all, some would allow you to use it at a reduced level, some would let you use it to its full potential, you would not know which until you've begun the paperwork so you should be expecting it to cost from £150-500 per venue you perform at depending on whether the prop gets veto'd or approved.

The prop would have ongoing maintenance and servicing costs that must be allowed for.

Travelling with flammable materials requires some extra procedures and costs even if you're just leaping into the back of a band bus. If you ever use ferries / planes / trains or third party delivery/haulage services then there's a whole other mountain of paperwork to be completed - many services also have a blanket ban on transporting any form of fuel/pyrotechnic/explosive.

It's not impossible, there's plenty of shows out there using much more complicated and dangerous kit but it's also nowhere near as easy as just adding another costume in to your show....

[kerry davies]

Tom has covered 99.9% of it but be warned that calculating costs should include quite a significant amount of training time and general rehearsal since it would be a band member and not an experienced performer doing the show, presumably.

 

First off a couple of days messing about until the user becomes comfortable, since even for people used to setting themselves on fire (me and Tom) having one's head explode is quite a startling and surreal experience. Crucial elements like the interaction of other band members, how much space is necessary for the performance and what materials in the vicinity need changing really only get sorted through trial and hopefully no error. Also I presume this would be done in lower lighting situations and the other band members could do without falling offstage while it's happening.

 

Just a word from the vaults of experience, we used to do this on outdoor shows and, despite beating safety into the performer with a blunt object, the idiot was once in a hurry to move into the next scene and burned his hands badly in his rush to take it off. In a rock show I think I would make certain it was the finale.

[paulears]

I like to think that I can do many things, but having dealt with managing performers, I really can't see that convincing them that this is safe is likely? Fair enough there will be stupid ones, but production paperwork is heavy on analysing risk nowadays. What on earth would the risk assessment say? My involvement with signing off the safety systems for ordinary stage pyros suggests that they appear in more show reports than they should - very often not because they were dangerous, but sometimes unreliable. Despite distance, and perhaps barriers, it's still not that uncommon for a pyro to set off another, or produce unusual result. The settlement of the powder in a cartridge having a big impact on how well it works. The idea of putting pyros on a person means careful control, and proper monitoring. A stage manager can see a pyro pod that has been knocked, but attaching something to a person is perhaps pushing it a bit for the person signing the effect off as safe each show.

 

I can think of all sorts of daft scenarios. I remember the dancer who just before going on with a flambeaux torch had sprayed his hair liberally with some kind of product that was mentioned as being very smelly - and when I heard them talking about it we squirted some into the aerosol lid and on lighting a lighter close to it, it went up with a phut!

 

Brian's £ estimate makes it a very wallet unfriendly idea, let alone a safe one.

[gareth]

Possibly worth noting that the OP doesn't appear to have visited the Blue Room since posting his request, so I guess he's not too interested in what we have to say!

[ImagineerTom]

@Paulears - traditional pyro methods / systems wouldn't go anywhere near a project like this for all the reasons you mention plus there is also surprisingly little control once they're triggered. Believe it or not there are a number of "ready made" components and technologies which would be combined together to create the effect as described here - if I was building this I wouldn't be inventing any new technology - but as always a big chunk of the skill in the design stage is interpreting the performance aesthetic and combining it with practicalities of touring a prop to chose the right methods.

 

Somewhere touring in deepest darkest asia there's a show that has a sequence I designed where a traditional "enchanted fountains" sequence (example -

) but instead of jets of water uses plums of fire. The performer has to wear the rig for 15 mins, deliver lots of dialogue and perform a fire sequence that incorporates 6 separate jets all attached to their body which have to synchronize wirelessly with jets built in to other props and survive 3-4 performance cycles per day.

[Bobbsy]

Possibly worth noting that the OP doesn't appear to have visited the Blue Room since posting his request, so I guess he's not too interested in what we have to say!

 

...or perhaps he tried to build something for himself and is currently residing at the burns unit at his local hospital?