Fireflies?

[jackbequick]

I'm TDing a series of 3 one act plays, one of which takes place at a lake during the night. The atmosphere is a very pertinent part of this production. Characters mention seeing fireflies, and I was wondering if anybody had any idea how to create a firefly-like effect. Budget for the show is next to nothing, so it cant be anything too elaborate.

[sandall]

Bits of aluminium foil dropped through cross-lighting, or suspended on black cotton & caught in brief flashes of cross-light?

[Shez]

You're basically looking for lots of small, moving points of light. Video projection sounds like the way to go to me. Assuming the venue has a projector of course. I imagine you'd want to have it wide enough to cover the entire playing area.

Sourcing / creating the footage will be the fun bit ?

[ImagineerTom]

go old-school, it's a tried and tested method.

 

Small yellow LED's, lacquered wire (aka enameled wire, magnet wire, transformer wire) that you colour black with a permanent marker, appropriate power supply.

 

Basically an LED on the end of several feet of wire, several bunched together utilising the natural spring and bounce of the wire to give the bulbs some organic movement et voila you have some very effective fireflies.

[GridGirl]

Try getting a small speaker, stretch a balloon over it and glue small pieces of mirror to the balloon, and put it in the wings somewhere. Focus a profile on the speaker at the appropriate angle and you'll get (obviously) reflections off the mirror. You might need to experiment to find the right audio to play through the speaker to get the sort of movement you want - it doesn't need to be loud enough for the audience to hear. This trick I've seen used for Tinkerbell, but it should work in this scenario too!

[jackbequick]

How exactly do I play music loud enough to create movement, but not loud enough for the audience to hear? Keep in mind, it's a very small, intimate theatre.

Try getting a small speaker, stretch a balloon over it and glue small pieces of mirror to the balloon, and put it in the wings somewhere. Focus a profile on the speaker at the appropriate angle and you'll get (obviously) reflections off the mirror. You might need to experiment to find the right audio to play through the speaker to get the sort of movement you want - it doesn't need to be loud enough for the audience to hear. This trick I've seen used for Tinkerbell, but it should work in this scenario too!

[DrV]

I haven't tried this but... a small section of silver foil shimmer curtain off stage with a draught on it from a fan. Pointing at that is a profile, possibly with a spotty gobo, and the reflected light going towards the stage. A bit like a quiet version of Grid Girl's suggestion. Worth a try perhaps.

 

Dave

[Don Allen]

Having seen fireflies on the Amazon last year, the difficulty is in getting a dot firefly on the stage. If you use haze, then you get a beam, if you don't use haze, then you get the dot on whatever surface it lands on. The led's suspended over the stage seem to be the logical choice, but would be more realistic of lowered into position when needed, then flown out when not needed, which is the same as fireflies moving away.

 

This

shows what I am pointing out, that you have to have a surface for the "firefly" location. Something like this would work of a rear cyc or set walls for a budget effect.

[richardash1981]

How exactly do I play music loud enough to create movement, but not loud enough for the audience to hear? Keep in mind, it's a very small, intimate theatre.

You probably want very low frequencies, and with a bare loudspeaker drive unit (no box) it will be pretty useless at reproducing those frequencies, so you can probably drive more signal than you think. The problem might be more that you don't want all the fireflies to move together!