[SML] Aurora Borealis effect

Mick Alderson mick.alderson at gmail.com
Fri Oct 18 20:30:55 UTC 2019


Bill asked:

> Howdy gang,
> 
> Our fall production this year (along with approximately 62% of the High Schools in America) is Almost Maine and I?m looking for suggestions for the Aurora Borealis effect.
> 
> The director (and I) would like this to to REALLY wow the audience. The projector I have along with video of the northern lights was pretty, um,  meh?
> 
> I have available LED ellipsoidals and a twin spin and have budget to rent more units or a kick-ass projector if needed.
> 
> What say the List? Anybody have an awesome aurora effect they can share?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bill Potter
> St. Paul?s School
> Concord NH

My version of the aurora effect (from several years ago) used home-made glass gobos. I got eight pieces of heat-resistant glass from a local glass company, cut to the size of Source 4 gobos. I sprayed them with BBQ Black spray paint, then scratched aurora patterns into the dried paint of each plate. The resulting glass gobos went into eight 50 degree Source 4s focused onto the cyc in overlapping patterns. As I recall, three of the fixtures were colored with green, three blue, two red. I then created an irregular and overlapping slow chase effect for the eight channels on our Ion and loaded the effect into a submaster. The board op simply faded up the submaster to activate the chase and faded it out when done. 

The star field for the sky was done with a Blisslight. It looked like this:

http://malderson.nfshost.com/portfolio/maine.jpg

Mick Alderson
mick.alderson at gmail.com





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