Slow falling glitter effect

[stuartc]

I've a one off show in a couple of weeks time where for one song I'd like to have slow falling golden glitter falling towards the back of the stage. Flints do fairly large gold glitter, which I'd imagine would fall quite slowly, but how would be best to make it fall?

 

The stage is about 6m wide, but is only 3m tall, with about 2ft of non-visable flying height. (Ie no fly floor, so can't just throw glitter manually).

 

Pyro is out for this one, as it needs to be fairly quiet, but are the confetti spreaders from terralec any good? Are they hirable (Leicestershire)?

 

The other idea I had was a flown horizontal drape with glitter resting on top and a DMX fan.

 

Has anybody made this effect and had suggestions on the best way to make it happen?

 

Thanks

[mumbles]

May not be of any help, but recently, when a dance group required cofetti to fall from above the stage, we made our own drop boxes.

 

We also have only a couple of feet thats out of view, with RSJs in a grid in it. We used par 56 lamp boxes, which were gaffered to the RSJ, with sash running along the ceiling, and dropping down in the wing. When the sash was pulled, it tipped the box over and the confetti fell out. However, we didnt have anyone on stage when it was operated, so that made the RA easier.

 

Here's a paint picture to show what I mean. Also, we had a strop round the RSJ and attached to the sash, so the sash and box couldn't fall due to pulling to hard or gaffa failing.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j267/martinhoddinott/dropbox.jpg

[the kid]

We have doen the same sort of thing but used 1/2 a large card tube/gutter.

[Jivemaster]

Use the lightest confettii that you can find then at least there will be some air resistance to falling under the influence of gravity.

[GridGirl]

The Terralec confetti spreaders sound like a broken vacuum cleaner - horrendously noisy! Can you rig stuff to the roof - a snow curtain idea might work. Two bars with a piece of cloth hung between them so it makes a large capital U shape, slash the cloth vertically along its length, and then tie ropes to the ends of one of the bars and have a person in each wing using the rope to shake the bar and glitter will fall out of the slits! I've found it works pretty well when you shake the bar from the flyfloor, but there's no reason to expect it won't work with the bar being shaken from the ground.

[chrispuxley]

I regularly use this effect for the final 'pose' in dance shows etc. If you use part trays (the ones with little drawers that pull out) (see here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000AXFE...lance&n=228013) spread three across the stage with a piece of string threaded through the drawers (varying the spacing between drawers on the string) you can easily produce the desired confetti / shimmer drop.

 

Chris

[zonino]

but there's no reason to expect it won't work with the bar being shaken from the ground.

 

yup, they work fine from ground as well (and you can see how it looks more easily too!)

[peternewman]

Two bars with a piece of cloth hung between them so it makes a large capital U shape, slash the cloth vertically along its length...

Definately the way to go. We used the same technology (albeit flying the bar in and out a bit) for the same effect when we did A Chorus Line recently for the big dance number at the end.

 

HTH

 

PN

[robert morley]

gridgirls idea sounds good, but the fan idea sounds good to.

I think that you should use metallic confetti insed of glitter, the bigger peaces would be easier to see and you could use mumbles idea to release it.

hope it helps. :)

[GridGirl]

One thing that's just occurred to me is that we used gold flutterfetti on panto - fired from a couple of CO2 cannons, but that's not really important! - and it was a complete PITA to clear up. For some reason, it stuck to the stage something awful, you didn't ever collect it all by sweeping, and so it was a right pain. Looked lovely, but we're still finding the stuff all over the building nearly six months down the track! Just something to consider....

[back_ache]

I remember reading about one solution being a flown cloth wrapped around one of a pair of rollers, under motor power the cloth moves from one roller to the other releasing the glitter trapped in the rolls as it goes, it has the adventage of a nice even flow, quietness and varible speed, the PITA is the system has to be reloaded manually by dropping the system down, reversing the system and manually sprinkling it in.

 

Depending on the length you want to drop over and for how much time you want it to run it must also be quite heavy.