Thursday, February 23, 2012
Pure Smoke
Prop Agenda: This was making the rounds on email yesterday: The Pure Smoke system by Jason Brumbalow. Say you need a clothes iron or a tea kettle to make steam on stage, but generating that kind of heat is too dangerous for the actors. You can probably hide one of these somewhere and let it make some room-temperature theatrical fog for you.
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4 comments:
Cool! I wonder how this stuff works. Given that you apparently have to crush the main body of pure smoke to get it to work originally made me think that it was dispersing into some form of particulate, but there would have to be some sort of air current to make it billow and move like that, and I don't know how visible a particulate moving in the air like that would be. So crushing it appears to start some form of chemical reaction creating some form of gas which is lighter than air, or else the Pure Smoke would not flow up.
This is very awesome and offers all sorts of interesting new possibilities it says in the article that the mechanism has to be strapped to the actor’s chest. I would be interested to see what the mechanism looks like and how large it is. The puffs that were created are not that large and I am curious to see how they would read in a large theatre. I would also like to learn more about exactly how this mechanism works.
Okay, this stuff is really cool! Getting illusionists to make a promo video makes it infinitely cooler. I started looking up what is used to make this effect. It’s propylene glycol. It’s considered a biocide by the EPA which makes me really not want to put this stuff on my hand. In WWII they used it to sanitize the air in bunkers. It was also used as antifreeze for the same reason it’s used to make vapor. It messes with the properties of water which makes for a cool effect but not so good for your health.
Ellusionist is an amazing company, I've been using their decks for years and they always provide great illusions. This seems like a very interesting illusion. Ive tried to find similar illusions but the most I've found in years past was simple baby powder packs and a gel pack that when applied to your fingers greats a lighter then air fiber that gives the appearance of smoke. as Kerry touches on this could have a great versatility in a small theatrical setting but it seems to be designed for an unclose illusion and might not read as well for a stage performance.
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