Lighting a mirror

[DavidLee]

Sorry, but physics is against you. Any ray of light striking a mirror is reflected at the same angle to the perpendicular that it came in at. This means that if you try to light it by pointing a lantern at it then it will only appear bright to a very few members of the audience and they will be looking straight at an image of the lantern.

 

What you need is a surface that is effectively made up of lots of little mirrors all pointing in slightly different directions. There are textured reflecting media available from Lee and Rosco that should work better than a simple mirror.

 

eg Lee and Rosco e-colour 273 "Soft Silver Reflector" (the Rosco product looks like it may be better) or perhaps 270 "Scrim".

 

You will probably still need to light the cross from several directions to make it look bright from all angles.

 

David

[MrPete]

Just had a quick think on this. Can you not buy those small aerosol cans of window frosting? The kind you get from craft & hobby shops for decorating windows & bottles for Christmas? Not the type that makes the snow, but it's essentially a heavy frosting effect. That would enable you to use less lanterns as well, as the beam is spread out in varying angles due to the frosting effect.

 

Here's a similar product, but film based.

Or even this handy guide to make your own! How well that would work though, I don't know.

 

Hth,

 

MrPete

[mac.calder]

What you need is a surface that is effectively made up of lots of little mirrors all pointing in slightly different directions. There are textured reflecting media available from Lee and Rosco that should work better than a simple mirror.

 

That is what the hairspray does (or vaseline). IIRC it is due to refraction as the light passes through the particles of hairsprey and diffusion as the light goes through the gaps between the particles that the spread occurs.