"Wall of smoke"

[Ynot]

Tony - have you considered an ICE 100? It's a relatively compact machine that will take ice cubes to act as the chiller so it could be set above head heght.

Nope - we have an old Antari jobbie which does the same thing and to be honest I've had limited success with that in the past for low fog effects

[J Pearce]

Really heavy haze and a DLC-esque wall of light might do better at the same effect. I've managed to hide people behind such a haze wall before, though it requires careful control of the various light levels and angles.

[Ynot]

Really heavy haze and a DLC-esque wall of light might do better at the same effect. I've managed to hide people behind such a haze wall before, though it requires careful control of the various light levels and angles.

Indeed.

 

I will likely have a decent compliment of Mac 101s on the upstage barrel - at least 8, possibly 16 depending on budget nearer the time - and these, coupled with LED Colorado Tri Tours giving sides will mean there's plenty of scope for lighting the stuff.

 

The effect that's been described to me by the client is quite specific, though there's always room for negotiation in these things. :)

 

 

 

 

[benwillcox]

I have built something like this, which I call a 'fog curtain'. Bit of a cheap and cheerful version of the commercial fogscreens.

 

It consists of a 3m length of 4 inch soil pipe drilled out with 15mm holes, with approx 45mm lengths of 15mm plastic plumbing pipe hot-glued into each hole to make nozzles.

I use a Stairville AF-150 fog machine with Stairville 'fast-fog' fluid, which dissipates very quickly and is perfect for the effect. The fog machine discharges into a piece of 8 inch flexible ducting which is connected to an 8 inch inline fan, and the fan exhaust travels through another length of 8 inch ducting before going into a 8-6 and then a 6-4 inch reducer connected to the soil pipe. The other end of the pipe is capped off.

 

Here's a little video of the first testing I did:

 

And here's one in the venue itself during setup:

 

If you wanted a length longer than 3m you'd probably need a beefier fog machine, the AF-150 gives up after about 10-15 seconds of full output and needs recovery time to heat up again. I previously tried the effect without the inline fan but with a chiller, but was far too feeble. The inline fan gives it the 'oomph needed'. Of course the 8-4 inch reduction is very restrictive, so may be better to use 8in pipe although that's not as readily available as drain/soil pipe.

 

Ben

[mackerr]

Another request for this Burlesque show is a 'wall of smoke' that the ladies can stroll through at the start of one number.

 

The most effective "curtain" is likely to be a Nitrogen curtain. Shooting the fog down from an overhead supply pipe you can create a solid fog curtain that disperses quickly. The downside is it can be expensive, the upside is you may be able to rent a fog curtain from a special effects house.

 

http://www.back-stage.com/cryogenic-and-fog-special-effects/

 

Mac

[kerry davies]

How about reversing the thinking and having the "wall" generated from the bottom?

Some sort of smoke source/s at the bottom allied with incandescent heat/light sources. We made a fairly effective "pillar of light" with smoke machine and parcan audience blinders in a stage pit a long time ago.

 

E2A just remembered a cheapo Stars in Their Eyes where a glitter curtain held back a bank of fog in a "trap area" back of set and the entrances actually brought on the fog as they passed through. Not suggesting glitter curtain but something along the lines of a trapped volume of smoke released by the entrant.