House on fire

[JCC1996]

Hi,

 

I'm building a flat to represent a house. The flat is just two 8x4 sheets of MDF upright and hinged in the middle, they'll sit at 90 degrees (in an L shape) with a window cut out of one sheet. I hope that makes sense!

 

It'll be painted as a traditional croft because the scene is about the Highland clearances, the complicated bit is how to make it go 'on fire'. I'm thinking of a smoke machine behind the flat with a fan blowing smoke out the window? I saw the post on here recently about the flame effect light bulbs, perhaps these could be utilised here? I'm really a bit lost as to the best way about this, so any advice would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks,

 

Joe

[alistermorton]

Going "old school", I've found you can get a reasonably convincing flame effect using a bunch of MR16s running in an effect to simulate the dancing colours of the flames, Colour them up in different oranges, yellows and reds and experiment with your desk's effect generator.

 

The addition of an even more old school Strand rotating flame flicker effect or two on a wash can help the illusion with the smoke catching the flickering beams. I've used a split yellow/red gel on the disk to good effect along with a small cluster of MR16s for the seat of the fire. The MR16s have reasonably low thermal inertia so can be made to either flicker or fade as desired, although not as quickly as an LED.

 

As an alternative to MR16s, you could use LEDs.

 

Edit to correct typo.

[timsabre]

Smoke machine + flickering yellow/orange lights shining through the smoke towards the audience is very convincing, with suitable sound effect.

[kitlane]

You could use a video projector with some suitable flame animations.

 

Remember this is theatre, not a movie. With just some flickering orange and yellow light plus smoke plus a good sound effect the audience will totally buy into the effect.