ETC Element; programming a fire effect for a LED RGBI unit?

[Scott Parker]

Hi All,
I'm looking for a little guidance in building an effect cue(s) for the
fire barrel in RENT. I've got an Apollo MultiBeam LED unit patched as
a multichannel unit; RGB + Intensity. Works well with the color picker
and such. (That was the first hurdle.)
Now, I'd like to create an effect of a fire burning in the barrel.
Hopefully looking like it burns with a variable rate and slowly gets
dimmer over time.

I"ve only created a few step effects in this board so far and that
seems like there might be a less labor intensive method using this
board. Thoughts? Suggestions? Tutorial?

Thanks, Scott


--
Scott C. Parker
Lighting Designer
http://scottcparker.com/
Georgia & New York City
718-757-6661

[oddz...@yahoo.com]

Scott, 

First and always I would like to recommend the ETC forums for this type of question, the user base is extremely active, and the ETC folks monitor the forums constantly. Also, the ETC Eos Programmers facebook group is a good source of information for this kind of thing as well. 

However, as I am an active member of both I may be able to help you. There are two ways I would really consider doing this. I would recommend a hue sat fade or a color fade, sorry I am not in front of my desk right now and cannot recall what they call them on there anymore, where you fade within the orange red randomly. However, this could take a while to customize and time is not often on our side. I would also look into absolute effects with random timing and random order (once again I cannot recall the exact terminology, maybe someone else can help me out here). If you have not worked with absolute effects before please feel free to contact me off list and we can chat about them a little bit more

Hope this helps

PJ

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[Jeff Ward]

Scott,

Can't help you with the cueing, but the most effective fire effect I've seen was what we did on the Broadway production of "South Pacific". There were two 55 gallon drums, each with 3 or 4 MR16 birdies focused on an artistically cut piece of white silk. The silk was blown upward and kept animated by a small muffin fan. As it randomly blew around it caught the differently colored beams of the birdies. Other stagehands seeing the show couldn't understand how the FDNY approved an open flame on stage. Sorry you didn't get to see it on a backstage tour, but we were only open for 2-1/2 years, and you were busy.

Currently without a show since the "Warhorse" actors were bored and didn't want to extend their contracts until this fall, forcing Lincoln Center Theater to take in a rental show -  "Ann", about former Texas governor Ann Richards. By all accounts it's a wonderful piece, but with only one actor and one desk, there aren't many jobs. In the meantime, I am far from starving as I am building model railroads for three clients. Having the stagehand skill set allows you many, many options in this world. Will be back at LCT in the late summer/early fall. 

Jeff Ward

IATSE Local #1

long ago - Tech crew, Brien McMahon HS, Norwalk CT