stgtech Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 I am looking for the most effective way to project highly realistic moving clouds arcoss the entire cyc. 2 ideas so far, Hire movers with glass cloud gobos and program them to continuously scroll across cyc or use atleast 3 projectors and a media server such as Arkaos. any help or advice anyone can offer would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GridGirl Posted September 12, 2007 Share Posted September 12, 2007 Rather than movers with cloud gobos, effects projectors (not to be confused with animation discs) are much more effective. We've got a couple of (very old!) RDS projector lanterns and they work extremely well. Cheaper to hire as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted September 12, 2007 Share Posted September 12, 2007 I've got a Strand cloud disk and matching 2K and by today's standards they are pretty dull. On a dark stage, on a cyc - it looks wonderful - but our stage is grey, not black, and spill/reflection from any other light on stage wipes it out quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted September 12, 2007 Share Posted September 12, 2007 Is it an East Anglian thing to paint your stage grey? Ours used to be too, until a few years ago. Anyway, effects projectors are the way to go to get realistic clouds. They will be much cheaper to hire than even one video projector and media server, let alone the 3 you think you'll need. I take it that you have a large stage? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlc Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 If you just need clouds there is no need for using Archaos or similar(though we use Archaos and I fully recommend it for more complex use). We have a 30 min cloud loop filmed with a domestic DV camera then captured to a laptop.(filmed from my garden as it happens). This plays happily on any laptop running Windows using Windows Media Player.(you can set it to loop continuously) We then use a single high power projector (5000 lumen ) to cover our 32 ft wide cyc. It is also possible to use the "clouds avi" as a powerpoint slide to allow simple change to other images (and bck if you want) (we introduced a thunderstorm during our sunny day this way, though Arkaos is probably the better way to do this) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stgtech Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 well I got more detailed specs today. what they are really looking for is moving clouds across the entire 78 FOOT yes thats right 78 foot cyc. The clouds have to change throughout two days worth of time in the play. so deffinetly Arkaos. Problem: the hanging scenery which fly's in and out during the show is a triangular rooftop with the peak being 20' and the edge being 15' feet from the cyc. with the 4 5000 lumen sanyo projectors im looking at with the widest lens sanyo makes its got be 15.5' away to get a 19.5 foot wide. x4 to fill the 78 foot cyc. so basically the problem now is if I get those projectors, im still looking at having to have the lens excatly where the edge of a flying set piece is. I think I could go above and back by maybe 3-4 feet where the peak is 20ft and then project down a bit. any ideas. I attached a graphic to make it easier...http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i58/stageprop/Untitled-1.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 OK, so your cyc is 78 feet wide, but how tall is it? Assuming your projectors have a 4:3 aspect ratio, since your image will be 19'6" wide it will only be 14'7 1/2" (19.5 /(4/3)) tall. This gets worse if your projectors have a 16:9 aspect ratio. The image would then only be 11' tall ( 19.5/(16/9) )! If you need your image to be taller then you will need more projectors. You could turn the projectors on their side (but only if its OK to run them this way round. It may not be...) so your projected image is 19'6" tall and 14'7" wide. You'd only need on extra projector for this, but you'd lose roughly 2'6" of image from both sides of your cyc as 5 * 14'7 1/2" = 73' 1 1/2". Of course, creating the video for the projectors on their side will be a little bit harder than it already is. Anyway, are you absolutely sure that you have to use such a high-tech solution? You mention that here are a few scene changes, but are these done in blackouts or does the video sequence have to run for the entire length of the play? If its always running, then you won't have much room for error in the timing of the show. If the scene changes or the actors are a little quick or slow, then you may end up over or under running the length of your video sequence. I've got no experience of Arkaos, but hopefully it has some means of slowing or speeding up the video playback? How about using a combination of many glass-disc effects projectors to get your clouds, and floods to color your cyc according what time of day it is meant to be? You could even use a couple of moving heads to create a sun and moon slowly tracking across the cyc as the day/night cycle progressed. The advantage of this approach would be that any aspect of it (cloud speed, cyc color, etc) is very quick and simple to change according to what the director wants (and who hasn't worked on a show where things get changed at the last minute?). The big disadvantage of the Arkaos/projector solution is that creating the video content will be difficult. For a start you can't just get a domestic-level video camera and go out and record some clouds. Well you can but the resolution will be terrible for such a wide screen, and I don't know of any camera that records in the extremely wide aspect ratio you'll need so you'll need some way of creating a very wide video sequence from multiple sources. Since you only want to show clouds, and possibly the sun and moon, you can probably get away with the lack of resolution. Another difficulty will be in getting all of your projectors to line up and appear to work as one large screen i.e. you don't want to be able to see the joins between adjacent images. Sorry if all this sounds like I'm trying to criticize you: believe me, I'm not. I'm just a little tired of this 'reach-for-the-technology' approach that seems to be taking hold not just in this industry, but elsewhere as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stgtech Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 Oh trust me. at this point as projection specialist im about to recommend the glass gobo approach myself. But the director really really wants to use projectors. As for shooting, im using four Canon XL-A1's to capture the horizon, then piecing them all together in adobe after effects. As far as timing, Arkaos is DMX controlled for each video clip so im going to make each clip about 3 minutes more than they timing needed, so the clips would be written as cues. And no none of the changes are during b/o. Also, the projectors are in 4:3 but we are using uplighting from ground strips to blend into the video. He only wants cllouds/sky projection at the top of the cyc, the rest can be lighting with gel picked, matchcing my colors in the video. Thanks for the quick reponse and if I dont come up with something soon im going to have to call it off, but ide really like to do this for him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 Instead of trying to match the video colors, why not just convert your video to black and white and play with the contrast until you get well-defined clouds on a black-ish background. That way you can pick any wash colour you like, and your projectors will have the most amount of punch to overcome your cyc washes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stgtech Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 now that, sounds like a very good idea. much thanks, ill run this by some other members of the team but that could work very well. still need to decide where to put the projectors in order to avoid the set though. Has anyone here had any experince with mirror's or the keystoning abilities in higher end projectors? Just for the record im looking into Sanyo PLC-XP57L with the LNS-W32 lenses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P. Funk Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 Assuming you just want to avoid the beam from the projectors spilling onto the flats, you could use an appropriately shaped flash object in arkaos to come in and 'mask' that part of the screen when the flats come down... That's assuming the flats will hide the part of the cyc theyre obscuring through... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvi675 Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 Also, if you run ArKaos in Maxi mode then you have keystoning abilities in the software... I think... Matt Edit: Just checked and yes, it does Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnparrack Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 sounds like you'd need projectors with built in soft edging capabilities like the Panasonics 7700 or Barcos or Christies.0.8 lens (based on R9/R12 barco) would @4.59m throw give u images of 5.90m (78ft =~26m)So as u already stated u need 4 projectors, but remember the 10% overlap u would also need. U could put a Mask into the software being used, but remember even when projecting black, the projector will always emit light. Ps..I'm experienced with Barcos R8/G8/R12/R20, Christie X4/X6, 8Ks and 15Ks, Pamasonic 7700's and 10ksU could keystone all of these and still be able to line them up without too many problems..especially as your not projecting graphics etc,or images requiring criticle line up.BArcos synergix would allow u to input 1 unsplit image and the software would do the divide and softedging...very simple a effective to use..I've also done something similar to this with an airline seat launch, projecting 4 images knitted with north south east and west soft edges to form one large image (2+2) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stgtech Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 Just coming back to this now that the show is over and I have a moment to spare....I ended up using ETC source 4 50 degree's mounted on apollo right arms along with apollo smart move DMX's with two counter rotating leave patterns and a static glass cloud pattern in each fixture. Results were beautiful. Used chamsys to run clouds and haze and star drop. Ran perfectly. Thanks Chamsys and Matt and all who contributed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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