The first one was what to make that Mark and Roger can "burn" stuff in in the opening number when they have no heat and are trying to stay warm. Originally, I had planned to put an "illegal wood stove with the flue going up through a skylight" as the original script had called out. But after the redesign, the stove went away and I really hadn't readdressed it. In the movie, they light a metal garbage can on fire. So that was easy enough. I figured I'd throw a couple of the silk flame effects units in the bottom of a beat up old can, hook them to a dimmer channel and call it done. Except that the guys have to actually throw papers IN the can and we risk the papers landing on the silks and pinning them down. The flicker stops and the effect is shit.
So, I turned back to a technology that my father first made in the 80's. It was a home-made version of the GAM Flickermaster DMX8 units that they sell for $800 big ones, if you can even find it anymore. But for $50 in electronics and a couple of hours time, I have a worthy substitute. In the 90's, dad improved on the technology, making it two channels and making the power source "dimmable" so that you could fire it from a light cue. It is even more clever when you think that he came up with the idea before GAM. His career was in electronics, working for the library system of a metro school district, so he got to play with cool things all the time. The electronics ran off of a 9V battery and kept going, but the 120V bulbs that you are flickering dim as they continue to flicker. Pretty cool! But I could not find that old unit anywhere. Apparently someone borrowed it and it never made its way back.
So, last Monday morning, I picked up $100 worth of crap at Radio Shack and made my way to my dad's. We spent the morning recreating his second generation device, only with improvements...3rd generation! This unit has 3 channels that flicker at different preset rates, plus a fourth pass-thru channel so that a bulb is constantly on, but dims with the rest. He even had an old galvanized trash can that he didn't want anymore. So, I loaded all of that into my car (getting REAL tired of my new car being my truck!) Back at the shop, I wired pairs of sockets into 4 circuits and mounted them about 6" from the bottom in the can. Connected the controller and WA LA... if you don't see the bulbs, it looks like random flicker of flames.
The last big thing that I had on my list was to put legs on the moon. Now, this doesn't seem like a big deal. I put legs on platforms all the time. However... This thing is made of 4 pieces of a 12' circle. OK...so 4 legs per section. EXCEPT, it slopes. So, no two legs are the same. And I am dealing with platforms that are essentially each 6' equilateral triangles. AND the legs all inset from the edge so that there is knee space under the disc when it becomes the table in the cafe at the end of Act 1. So, after some math and time figuring out how to assemble this beast, I finally had a plan. I made the legs and managed to get the thing together with the help of my good friend, Glenn Saltamachia. We numbered each leg and marked where it went underneath so that we could remember how to put it back together on Saturday. This took all morning, but just having the legs worked out should cut the assembly time dramatically. Once the legs are under it, we can brace it and screw it to the floor and it should be rock solid.
Originally, I was going to skirt the base in luan, bent on the radius and painted black. Then when we stepped back and looked at it on legs, Sharon suggested that I should just use black fabric...BRILLIANT! That is a huge time saver. The amount of fabric that I need is the cost on one sheet of luan, so I save the cost of two additional sheets and no painting. DONE!
You can see from the photo, that this moon platform is huge! But we have it done and it is ready to load in.
So, Saturday morning, we will load the trailers at 8AM and head to the theater. By 9AM, I plan to be dragging stuff up the fire escape to the stage door and on to stage. If this goes together as well as Night of the Living Dead last September, we should have platforms up by noon, walls by two, decorative pieces, stairs and railings in another hour...out of there by 3 or 4 at the latest.
That is the goal...we will see. I'm getting excited and am anxious to just get it done!
R
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