Talking Tree

[Darkness]

Hi,

 

I'm involved with a show in a October, it's a pantomime type show in which the Queen gets turned into a tree. When the Queen talks whlst being the tree I have been asked to give the effect of the tree talking. Our initial thought is to put fairy lights in the tree and turn them on/off as and when needed. My concern is that fairy lights might not be bright enough to really show over the stage lights.

 

Has anyone got any different or better ways of doing it or would fairy lights be the best way to go about it.

 

Thanks

Kevin

[Brian]

Why not make the tree really talk?

 

Cut a hole about head sized in the tree and stretch some latex (aka a balloon) over the hole from the rear. The actor just pushes their face against the latex and talks as needed.

[Jivemaster]

Budget?

 

Get a "tree" with suitably gnarled features with a latex face moulded in. Drive the face with animatronics to make it move left, right, up and down a little and the mouth move with the voice. Remote control can be classical puppetry or something more technical from model r/c or industrial servo market sectors.

[Ynot]

Or even build a small-ish flat panel TV/PC monitor into the trunk and feed it with pre-recorded or possibly live feed of the actress in bark-ing make-up...?

[Seano]

There have been some discussions here in the past about 'A Christmas Carol' and the scene where the door knocker morphs into the face of Marley's ghost. Worth digging out those old threads I would think; its similar enough to what you're looking to do that you might pick up some good ideas there.

[Mat]

Dependant on your budget and if you can make changes to your set is to have what previously said of having the latex and then the pre-recorded lib to play when need be.

 

If you are just looking for lights, you could have the fairy lights draped around the tree in a "face shape" and have them flash when necessary. Fairy lights, dependant on where you get them from can be quite bright against stage lights. I worked on a concert where we had fairy lights all along the back wall of the stage and a load of cans on the rig and you could quite easily still see the fairy lights with the stage lights still on them.

[richard_cooper]

A few months ago I put together the bits for this as the chrysalis for a production of The Insect Play, which could be carried around by an actor. It was made from a bunch of cheap RGB LED strip of ebay controlled by two RC$2Magic DMX2Dim units via the sound to light on a 520i, in tern fed from a radio on the actor (which was processed as audio as well). Worked really rather well (although not my design and I didn't make the actual prop!)