whitefox77 Posted September 16, 2008 Posted September 16, 2008 (edited) This last weekend I got married, and although I didn't do any fireworks as part of the wedding or reception, several friends, my new wife and go back to my parent's and set off a bunch of stuff after the reception was over. I was rather pleased that no one realized that some of the shells I fired were home made until I pointed it out However, in the end most people found the commercial cake (an Emerald City) to be the most impressive. Although I have made a simple repeater myself, I think I'm a long way from producing anything that nice. One effect that did work quite nice was a combination of a home made smoke effect, and a simple commercial strobe device (Lazer Flash by Phantom). Using standard Chinese visco I setup a timed effect where a very fast burring white smoke candle was set off first, and allowed to saturate the area in front of the strobe. The strobe it's self was placed inside a coffee can, and the "back" (side facing away from the audience) of the can was cut away completely. The rest of the can had wholes punched all over it using a large nail and hammer. The effect was that the background behind the strobe was brightly lite with "beams" of light shooting out the wholes and through the white smoke in front of the strobes. Edited September 17, 2008 by whitefox77
TheSidewinder Posted September 16, 2008 Posted September 16, 2008 Hey, congratulations on getting married!!! And it sounds like you put on a nice show, too. Good idea on the strobe!
tentacles Posted September 17, 2008 Posted September 17, 2008 That strobe effect sounds neat, I was just thinking that if you lit 2 or 3 different colored strobes in there (maybe space them as far apart as you can, don't know if it'd make a difference without painting the can black on the inside) and you might get beams of light from different directions.
optimus Posted September 17, 2008 Posted September 17, 2008 Congrats whiteFox! I've done similar things with strobes and bengals. Placing them behind trees works well. Very atmospheric. You can also use mirrors to double up your ground effects for cheap : ) Never done the smoke-rays though - gonna have to try that one out. Sounds really effective.
Sylar Posted September 17, 2008 Posted September 17, 2008 Mirrors ... haven't thought of that before. Is it wise to put breakables so close to hot sparks and the occasional choked fountain? As long as they don't break, I suppose the glass is easily cleaned though.
psyco_1322 Posted September 17, 2008 Posted September 17, 2008 Did anyone get a video of your strobey smoke effect fox?
whitefox77 Posted September 18, 2008 Author Posted September 18, 2008 No video tape I'm afraid. You don't actually need to use mirros (as in glass). For the Boscobell Wi. 4th of July shoot this year, we simply took pieces of card-bard 6"x12" put aluminum foil over them, then bent them in a 90deg "corner" then put the strobes on them. It was very effective.
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