The World's brightest Glowing Thing

[kuming]

Hello,

 

The choreographer would like the "thing" to be smuggled onstage by a dancer and passed to the crouched Morrison figure, while the rest of the dancers formed a people-pile around him. Then Morrison will slowly stand, holding the "Thing" out in front of him as though offering it to the World. Suddenly, the "Thing" will throw a brilliant light that will silhouette the dancer against the cyc for just a few moments. Then the light would suddenly go out, and the "Thing" will be passed to another dancer, who will spirit it offstage.

 

It symbolize the short, bright candle of Morrison's life with an effect that had the intensity of burning magnesium. Thus, it should be easy to tranfor and the size should be small and the colour should be in white colour. Furthermore, It should have on off switch and dimmable.

 

What bulb can I use and using what kind of dimmer and powersupply?

 

Please give me some suggestion!!

 

J. Kuming

[Flyingwysiwyg]

Hi,

 

An AF1000 Dataflsh Unit may be what you need.

 

It would require a 16A Mains feed and DMX, perhaps surreptiously loomed.

 

They are very bright and dimmable and give a quite good constant burst effect where they don't seem to strobe but just give a blast of very bright white light.

 

Be warned that in certain modes for special effects they can draw quite a bit of juice. They might also be a little bulky for you. Have a look at the tech specs. Still available to hire from most decent hire companies.

 

Off the top of my head I can't think of any unwired device that would give the same effect.

 

Cheers,

 

F - Wyg

[j_b]

You could of course cheat:

 

Using a UV sensitive thing - maybe an unactivated glowstick might do the job, you can fade in a UV flood which will make the thing glow bright.

 

Add to this a bright light source from infront, which lights the dancer and projects the silhouette toward the cyc.

 

With careful timing of the fades, you could make this reasonably convincing.

[woody74]

Anything bright enough to cast a shadow on the cyc will be murder on the eyes of the actors closest to it. And potentially really hot too...I second the cheating idea (but I don't believe UV is a viable solution given the amount of ambient light you expect to see).

 

-w

[Ynot]

It symbolize the short, bright candle of Morrison's life with an effect that had the intensity of burning magnesium. Thus, it should be easy to tranfor and the size should be small and the colour should be in white colour. Furthermore, It should have on off switch and dimmable.

This, as you describe it, is a HUGELY tall order!

As has been said already, anything that is bright enough to cast a silhouette on the cyc is gonna be dazzling and hot.

My advice - make the talent stand in EXACTLY the right spot and uplight him/her with a tightly focussed profile from the deck at DSC. And construct the globe from a luminescent material or paint it as such.

[Brian]

The choreographer would like the "thing" to be smuggled onstage by a dancer...

 

An AF1000 Dataflsh Unit may be what you need.

 

Bright though they are, I can't quite imagine an AF1000 being smuggled on stage.

[chrispuxley]

I saw quite a nice thing in a straight play the other day where a hanging practical was required to 'blow' on cue. They used an under-rated bulb (110v edison screw), which was dimmed to approx 50% during most of the scene then bumped up to full to make the filament fail. It was surprisingly bright for a short period. With some experimentation you might find appropriate dimmer levels and 'bulbs' wouldn't be expensive to replace over the run - although I don't know how quickly they might get dangerously hot, or more worryingly explode with the overvoltage. Perhaps you could have the entire lamp enclosed in a clear or diffused plastic globe in case the glass envelope failed, would also mean that the dancers couldn't touch the hot glass.

 

Anything bright enough to cast a shadow on the cyc will be murder on the eyes of the actors closest to it.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to block this short section so that the dancers had their eyes closed.

 

Chris

[Ekij]

Over-voltaging a 110V standard Lamp ("light bulb") would probably produce the effect required but I would have grave concerns about the possibility of "catastrophic failure" (read "exploding"). Containing the lamp withing a secondary transparent shell would be strongly advised.

 

Edit:

 

Taking a 110V lamp to 230V would probably be unnecessary on an otherwise dimply lit stage and somewhere in the 160 to 200V range would increase the probability of the lamp surviving for the few seconds required. Discard the lamp after each session whether or not it survived.

[Tomo]

You are going to have to 'cheat'.

 

Mostly due to this detail:

that will silhouette the dancer against the cyc for just a few moments.

If the real lightsource is handheld, you won't see what people recognise as a silhouette.

 

I got a bit bored and felt like playing with 3DS Max for a bit - needed to practice bones!

 

The dancer is stood roughly 4 feet from the cyc, and we can see roughly 20 feet of it:

Lightsource in hands

 

Lightsource on floor

 

You can juggle the floor can positioning and blocking to get a good silhouette - I used omnilights, you would use a spot of some kind to limit the illumination.

You'd probably need a little bit of steep top/facelight to fill the shadow between arms and body.

[musht]

Agree that probably best to `sell` the silhouette effect with other sources, bright enough handheld source may have heat or power difficulties.

 

Would suggest an LED as the handheld source though, single 3/5W White LED can be overdriven by a lot for short periods and supply easily met by battery power. Depending on the size of space it may carry the effect itself without additional sources for the silhouette.

 

In HK would think you have quite a number of local vendors with LED torches that would provide most of the parts required.

[GreatBigHippy]

This might not be as technically accurate as you want but a thought just occurred..

Why not do the silhouette separately then project it... or gobo it onto the backcloth? Its only for a few seconds so no one will notice any slight differences in position. That way the source will stand out on the actors, there is no need to blind them, and you can have a clean, crisp silhouette.

Maybe not what you want, just a thought.

[David A]

I would buy a 1 farad capacitor as used in those stupid car hifi's and have it on charge in the wings and connect it to a 100 watt car headlight bulb inside a glass spere with a switch underneath it,forget the dimmer; you would have to play with wattage and capacitance and charging voltage to fit in with the time and brightness but I think that is your best hope. It does fit all criteria except the dimming.

[peternewman]

It may also be worth considering a camera flash unit, although be careful, as there are likely to be lots of high voltages inside. But perhaps either using the flash itself, or just using it as a power source.

 

Disclaimer: I've not tried this, don't get an electric shock and die!

[GreatBigHippy]

Disclaimer: I've not tried this, don't get an electric shock and die!

 

I would second this by saying don't even try unless you have the certain knowledge that you know what you are doing. They are one of the only things I refuse to mess with due to the stupid potential for very messy mistakes.

 

EDIT: Potential!! Geddit!... I crack me up sometimes......

[David A]

Even if you acquired the perfect device, you would have a blinder, as you describe it, so no-one is going to see the silhouette effect even if you create one.