CAMELOT Theatrical Special Effects

The show was "The Best of How To Talk Minnesotan, The Musical" and it required a number of special effects. Besides the radio-controlled ringing phone (if this isn't a standard in your SpecFX inventory, you're just not doing theatre) there was a "snow angel" who needed not only the LightningWire halo I described earlier but a pair of flapping wings.

I referred earlier to the wings built by the University of San Diego which were on display at the USITT Conference in Toronto and published in the USITT Magazine: Theatre Design & Technology. Those folks had a budget. Our community theatre had very little so here's what I did:

The driver is a windshield wiper motor from the junkyard. I added a longer arm, a steel brace from the hardware store, then covered that with a blind box cover from the electrical department to give a curved surface, shielding the crank arm and preventing cable tangling. I used metal tubing, cut to size, as bearings, and light-gauge aircraft cable looped through eyebolt bearings to the T-Bars on each wing (biscuit-jointed birch) attached by strap hinges at the top and screen-door spring hinges at the bottom. The assembly was mounted on a plywood board with 8 D-cells (two four-cell Radio Shack battery holders) mounted with plumber's strap to the plywood and with shoulder straps cut from a backpack attached to the front of the plywood with fender washers. The switch was mounted on a wire that reached over the actor's shoulder so that he could activate the flap mechanism once he had passed through the entry door to the stage.

It worked perfectly and looked great! The angel appeared on stage and flapped his wings but got the greatest laugh when he turned around for his exit and the audience saw the machine which I had left exposed on purpose. The character playing the angel was, after all, an auto mechanic and it was exactly what he would have built. I owe a lot to Mark Reaney and his Edge of the Illusion concept; the audience saw not simply an angel flapping his wings but the actual machine that produced the effect and they loved it!

posted by C. J. # 10:33 PM