[SML] Northern Lights Doozie

[Joe]

Just brainstorming here... One option is to hang cloth like a teaser. Sew a hem along the top edge of the cloth. Insert a bent pipe to give it some waviness, and hang from the rafters.
For lighting it, perhaps you simply use a few different fixtures with gobos that have vertical stripes. Horizontal blind type of gobo, turned 90 deg.  Then aim those fixtures from below, up towards the cloth. Use a very soft focus, and then fade between the two or three fixtures to give it some variation in intensity along its length.
Another variation, if you have a high ceiling, is to not use the pipe in the top hem. Rather, attach it, by it self, onto the ceiling.  Then, tie cord, perhaps every foot along the top of the cloth. Then allow a length, perhaps at least 5' before you tie the top of the cord to the pipe.  Finally, use oscillating fans to blow onto the cloth and cause it to wiggle around a bit.  The lights I described above, with the gobos, is a good addition, though you may be able to omit them.

Since there is often color variation for the northern lights with green along the lower 2/3 of the cloth, and then fading to red for the top 1/3, that could be air brushed onto the cloth itself, or perhaps done in the gobo if you were to use specially made glass gobos with color. I wonder if simply using split gels would be an alternative?
A whole different way to go for color would be to use florescent paint on the cloth.  If you use a black cloth, which I think I would prefer, the invisible florescent paint is probably not a good option, because it is a milky white.  Though, perhaps you could experiment with it, trying it on a few shades of blue and grey.   The benefit of using the black light, is that you can light the cloth with it, and avoid lighting the rest of the ceiling.  If you don't go with the invisible florescent paint, one way to reduce the visibility of it is to use an air gun adjusted to deliberately splatter the paint.  Though, I think to look right, it would have to not be readable as splatter from the audience.---
I will mention one other idea that would be the most realistic to see, but probably unrealistic to do. Years ago, I traveled with Mac McConnell, who does one-man biblical dramas.  This was when we were touring with a full lighting system.  The venues were mostly churches, who tend to have high ceilings.  We used a couple of fog machines mounted to the lighting truss, to put out clouds during a storm scene.  On a few occasions, that fog would stay at the elevation where it originated, and spread out, staying at that elevation.  On one occasion, that layer was very narrow.  It looked like a laser fan illuminating a slice of fog, but in this case it really was the fog itself that stayed on a thin slice of elevation. This was during a rehearsal, so I speculate that the high ceiling allowed hot air to sit on the top layer, and the air conditioned air was inserted at the lower level, and the two layers kept very distinct.  The other one or two occasions I saw the effect, an audience was present, so the air wasn't as still. Perhaps the heat from the audience disrupted the layering, or that the A/C was cycling on more often.

For the aurora effect, the idea would be to deliberately create that layer of fog above the audience's head.  Then, using an eye-safe laser scanner, project the aurora down from above. The biggest drawback is that the laser light will end up hitting the audience, unless you restrict the scanning so it only hits the isle ways.

-Joe



     

   
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