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wyrd sisters


robthirlby

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Anyone got any ideas how we can make some form of genie appear and disappear out of a large urn on the stage in a small studio theatre. the audience will be less than 3M away, its a concrete floor. The urn is moved on and off and isn't big enough for a hidden person.

 

Any contributions welcome, I'm completely stumped.

 

Rob Thirlby, Leicester Little Theatre

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Video projection onto a jet of quick-dispersing smoke is one way I have seen it done. Requires careful positioning of the projector so the parts of the picture which miss the smoke end up somewhere non-obvious.
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You read my mind, Tim! There are a few tutorials online showing people’s efforts in building their own fog screens, and they appear to work quite well. One I looked at was even used outdoors for a Halloween event.

 

Basically the fog screens I looked at were comprised of two rows of fans either side of a long narrow slot that the smoke escaped through. The jets of air from the fans kept the smoke in a reasonably thin flat shape which worked well as a projection surface.

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I was thinking of the RSC production of Christmas Carol which I saw, they had a ghost appear out of a prop fire on stage using this technique. It was just a jet of smoke, there was no attempt to make it into a flat "screen", but the effect was still quite good.

I think they have a fairly big budget though!

 

Alternatively you could play it for laughs and have an inflatable genie pop up...

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Depending on blocking - jet of illuminated (LED PAR in the bottom of the urn - pick a 'magic' colour) fast dissipating smoke from the urn (dim the stage while this happens) then the genie appears from somewhere near the urn, panto style.
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When we did this in our small theatre we cheated and made a 'wash copper' our of MDF and hardboard with a cut out back just large enough for our demon to get in/out during a blackout. Our stage is has only got a 16 foot pros and has a solid floor. We just set it very near the pros on SL. After a couple of tries our demon actress could get in or out in well under 10 seconds. This also gave us somewhere to hide a couple of birdies with a nice green gel to light her from below.

 

 

I've got the CAD files for this somewhere I think.

 

Tom

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