Smoke/steam through tubing...

[steve1981]

Whilst watching television a few months ago I see a nightclub in Miami that had a great effect on the front doors. They were constantly open and as people were approaching the door, a thin mist of smoke/steam/god knows what come out from the entire door frame... top and sides which then allowed the person to walk through. A light effect also came on behind shining a kind of fire effect onto the smoke (which is the easy part.)

 

I am presuming that this can be made by using tubing to run around the inside of the door frame with lots of small holes in allowing the 'haze' to come out. BUT... how and what to connect the end too. Could a standard smoke machine be connected? Would there be enough pressure to push the smoke through the whole tube? Smoke machine on each end maybe? But then how would the end connect to the smoke machine as there needs to be a gap for the smoke to form properly when leaving the smoke machine? OR how about steam? Or will it be too hot? Maybe a fine mist? I really am stuck and this is to go on the entrance of a nightclub so cant be anything to ruin clothes/hair etc of guests coming in.

 

It really is a great effect and would love to hear some of your ideas on how I can create this for a new venue which is being refurbed at the moment.

 

All ideas welcome.

 

Thanks.

Steve.

[timsabre]

Probably water mist - this effect is used a lot at theme parks as it's cheap on consumables and disperses quickly. It requires very high pressure water though, expensive to set up in the first place.

 

It's unlikely to be smoke as the entry to the club would quickly become invisible in the gathering fog...

[steve1981]

Probably water mist - this effect is used a lot at theme parks as it's cheap on consumables and disperses quickly. It requires very high pressure water though, expensive to set up in the first place.

 

It's unlikely to be smoke as the entry to the club would quickly become invisible in the gathering fog...

 

What about if using martins new 'steam effect fluid' which disperses quickly and mean to be similar to co2?

 

Is there any problem in connecting piping directly to the nozzle of a smoke machine?

[Ynot]

Is there any problem in connecting piping directly to the nozzle of a smoke machine?

Yes.

 

The machine nozzles get VERY hot so will melt anything plastic.

 

And many machines rely on the heated fluid mixing with air as soon as it leaves the nozzle so it can actually become smoke rather than heated fluid.

[kerry davies]

Fogscreen. That seems to be what you suggest. There are a few different companies doing similar nowadays and the PLASA, Event Production shows have had a few demo's over the years.

 

Apologies, laptop crashed before I could write that for two way doors theyare not exactly recommended since people would crash into each other.

Your RA would need to consider people walking through a "blind" entry way and two-way traffic would be a no-no, IMHO.

[GridGirl]

I've often piped regular smoke machine smoke through tubing for various effects - but Tomo is absolutely right, you need an air gap around the nozzle to make it work properly. I've tended to find that it only needs to be an inch or so, and 99% of the smoke does go down the tubing and it works fine. One thing to note though is that if the tubing is long enough, the smoke will cool and behave like it's low smoke when it comes out of the other end of the tubing.

[gyro_gearloose]

And if the tubing is really long then some of the smoke will condense back into fluid, sit in the tube until the out, and then make your shoes really wet when it dumps itself all over you when you coil the hose up. And yes, this has happened to me.... :)