Creating a fire / flames effect

[NeilVP]

Make sure to choose the right type of starter, I did this once and the audible click from the starter as the contacts made and unmade rendered it unusable.

 

Neil

 

If your budget is non existant (very small) then try this:

build a frame for your fire from scraps of wood and screw logs over the hole in the middle.

turn the fire over and put several scaps of red and orange gel in the gap to fill it. several different colours work best.

wire up two standard houshold lamps up underneath in series with their own fluoescent starter motors.

Wire to a plug with appropriately rated fuse.

 

THe gels can handle lamps of 500W + so a couple of light bulbs 40 -60 W are no problem

If you email me (abt@callnetuk.com) I can send you pictures of what I did

 

It has been working fine now for over 10 years and if smoke or haze is put over it it looks like it's on fire, also no need to program in anything to a lighting desk plug it in and off it goes.

[ojc123]

About 20 years ago I produced a flame effect using 4 or 5 PAR 56 with orange/red/yellow gels. For each one I made a thing a bit like a windmill out of (probably) a catering size tin. These were mounted on a pin just over the lamps. The heat from the lamp made the windmill thing rotate and gave a flicker. The lamps were hidden behind set and had to be warmed up before the effect was needed to get the windmill things moving. The windmill things need to rotate very freely.

 

Cheap. Reasonably effective. A little fussy to set up and needed a lot of experiment to get sufficient rotation and enough light getting through. The light flickered over a pale set.

It's the kind of technology that used to be used on domestic electric fires in the 60's to create a flickering fire effect.

 

Take it or leave it.

[alistermorton]

Last fire I had to do we used three birdies with red yellow and amber gels from inside the fire, on a random chase (as has been previously described) augmented with an effects wheel to give the flickering red and yellow shadows on the set.

[Caracus258]

We have done it before using two bayonet fittings and a Flo tube starter. One lamp was permanent, the other was in series ( I think). Doubt it'd pass a PAT test though, and you need to watch the wattages.

[JimWebber]

I too would go with the pygmy lamps and fluorescent starters idea... I made up a nifty little box with a bulgin disco-light socket on it, and had the "fire" at the end of a length of multi-core cable.

 

Top Tip:

 

A suitably rated (read sized) "chocolate" block terminal is great for screwing down onto the pins of the starter!

 

Jim