Miss Saigon Helicopter

[jamesowenlewis]

Hi All,

 

A local amateur dramatics group is doing a production of Miss Saigon and I've been asked to design the lighting and special effects. I've looked at quite a number of videos on you tube of the 'Kims Nightmare' scene to get a few ideas. Im looking for some help or inspiration to design the helicopter scene. A video would be great but I'm not sure where to get one from or a model helicopter?

 

Any ideas?

 

James

[cedd]

Local society did this with a wooden frame with 4 halogen floodlights on it. A bit of ingenuity with pulleys meant they could fly it across and in (much easier in a proper flying house). Then with a dark stage and lots of smoke and some very good (and flipping loud!) sound effects - who needs a helicopter? With a dark stage and the helicopter's landing lights on, you wouldn't see much of the thing anyway. The real challenge goes to your noiseboys!

[ImagineerTom]

The original production's helicopter flying was nothing more than an illusion consisting of some sound effects and a couple of lights waggling on a darkened stage yet audiences will swear blind they saw a real chopper with blades whirring flying on the Drury Lane stage. Less is more!

[dbuckley]

The original production's helicopter flying was nothing more than an illusion consisting of some sound effects and a couple of lights waggling on a darkened stage yet audiences

 

I thought the "ton of smoke and the waggling lights" was the backup plan for performances when the helicopter refused to cooperate?

 

E2A: One might like this article in Honolulu Star-Bulletin from 1999.

[ImagineerTom]

The real helicopter had a couple of feet movement so you saw just enough flight in it as the lights were up but other than that all the "flight" was sticks and bulbs... Magic and effects only exist in the spectators mind; the art is in doing just enough real stuff to enable them to "see" everything else themselves

[paulears]

At the time, nobody quite understood how it was done, and the secret was kept tight. The sound designer spent time explaining how the sound had been recorded in LSI (or perhaps it was one of the other mags) at the time. I went on the theatre tour as a punter, and accidentally got myself lost backstage and found the helicopter and spotted how it was done. I then was found and escorted out! Sitting in the audience, the effect was pretty impressive, despite being essentially sound, blinders and movement. People swore it was a full size helicopter - because it looked like one. It worked for me.

[themadhippy]

elastic and tennis balls come to mind for some reason

[dbuckley]

On YouTube,

by Brian MacQueen.

[rossmck]

At the time, nobody quite understood how it was done, and the secret was kept tight. The sound designer spent time explaining how the sound had been recorded in LSI (or perhaps it was one of the other mags) at the time. I went on the theatre tour as a punter, and accidentally got myself lost backstage and found the helicopter and spotted how it was done. I then was found and escorted out! Sitting in the audience, the effect was pretty impressive, despite being essentially sound, blinders and movement. People swore it was a full size helicopter - because it looked like one. It worked for me.

 

I was under the impression it was *part* of the front of a helicopter, obviously no rotors etc, and the rest of the effect is all sound and lighting, is this the case or from your own discovery in the tour was it less than that ?

[kitlane]

elastic and tennis balls come to mind for some reason

 

That was how they did the rotor blades. There wasn't enough space to store the helicopter complete with solid rotor blades and fancy folding blade systems were too expensive/unreliable. 4 pieces of bungee cord each with a tennis ball on the end were attached to a motor. When the motor was spinning quickly it looked like solid rotor blades. I think the rest of it was just a fairly shallow section of the fuselage and some nice lighting and sound.

[paulears]

Indeed - people could get into it, and it went up and down. The cockpit was complete, forward facing lights in recesses, and where the engine compartment is on a huey was where it ended. The rotor assembly didn't extend past the sides when not rotating. In the show, which was very good for a lot of reasons, it appeared behind a fence against a black background - and apart from the helicopter sound which was HUGE, the entire stage was immensely busy with people and searchlight style effects, smoke and then the landing lights stabbed through the murk. All the work on recording real helicopters really worked. I actually read the sound articles and wondered what the fuss was about, so I went to a local heliport, with big helicopters and tried it. Rubbish! the wind from a helicopter landing just makes a huge mess, and you can't hear the thrashing and engine - just wind. Part of the article and subsequent book goes into a little detail on this, but I suspect they underplayed their solution to wind. I've since discovered you really are looking at zeppelins, and hairy covers to make this work. You;ll also discover that piston and gas turbine helps sound very different, and even the number of blades makes very different sounds - and the 'thwop thwop' sound is produced under certain flying conditions = where rotor speed and blade angle combine to make it happen. This could be a hunt for sound effects rather than record yourself - which seems an obvious thing to do, but my experience says it's not a quick one-shot recording.

[Just Some Bloke]

I remember seeing this from the cheap seats right at the top of the theatre and being angry that I was looking down at a hardboard floor to the helicopter as no-one had been bothered to paint it. The one thing I know about helicopters is that the floor is not made of hardboard! I may have paid less than others for my ticket but I'd still paid enough to cover a tin of paint!

[Nicktaylor]

I saw original Chorus Line from the cheapest in the Gods seats. You only just realised there were mirrors acrosss the back of the set!

[Don Allen]

Off topic but possibly relevant, I saw an Australian production of Minefields and Miniskirts at The Playhouse in Perth, WA, where they had a helicoptor (Huey or UH1Y) at the start of the show that was done with a mover for the rotors. They also had practical wooden bladed ceiling fans on the set that cast shadows. I successfully recreated the helicoptor effect on a community theatre stage using a four bladed ceiling fan and two profiles, one stage left centre and one stage right centre so we had two sets of rotor blades on the stage floor, plus the sound effects. This did not call for people to get into a helicoptor, just to get the image of Saigon Vietnam during the war.

[Ken Coker]

When everything around here was green fields, I remember PanCans being the popular helicopter of choice - accompanied by the usual very loud helicopter FX.

 

I would have thought that something bright and narrow - about 9 degrees - waggled around on a stand by an ever willing ASM should do the trick......accompanied by the usual very loud helicopter FX.

 

KC