MAKE: Chilled fog creates an appealingly eerie blanket on the ground. Most homemade fog chillers use a drink cooler and PVC tubing, but that design doesn’t keep the fog in the holding area long enough to chill it properly. Our fog chiller is very easy to build and does a great job of cooling the fog.
7 comments:
First of all I think it is funny and great that there is such thing as the HauntCon Chill-Off competition. Second, this is a nifty do it yourself project for Halloween, but it makes me think how this can be taken a step further. For example instead of a trash can actually making a metal drum with tubing coming out either end that sleeve onto the machine and the coiled tubing on the inside. That is just one idea for making this a “fancier” do it yourself project. And that thought brought me to an article I commented on last week that was about ‘Shadow’, a haunted trail outside Pittsburgh. They could have used a fog chilling product like this one to help the creepy atmosphere they were trying to create. It would have to be weather proof because cardboard and a trashcan do not seem to be the most reliable material choices for durability.
This is such a cute, easy project to make your halloween scarier! I think this is a great starting point to make something that is even more effective- like what Simone was saying. Redesign it to make it weather-proof and more durable. From there you could modify the design even more- maybe giving it more coils so the fog can cool even more, or instead of the cardboard box with a slit, you could use a longer tube and disperse the fog farther and cover more area- or even spin the cardboard box part and give the fog some interesting swirling patterns. This makes me really want to go out and experiment all the possibilities.
I think this is a good idea. I don't think it would be practical for being used for a long period of time. The materials do not seem very durable with too much use. This can be very useful for an everyday person who wants to use fog in something. It would not work in theatre as well because it will be used a lot more and the effects might not be as powerful as needed. This would be good for a haunted house during halloween. It is pretty cheap to make and easy.
I love Halloween and have always wanted to make my own haunted house, and every year I see fun do-it-yourself projects for things such as this homemade fog chiller! I love their design and think that it would work reasonably well, except that there seem to be a few issues that I want to touch upon. First, with this size cooling system you would either need a bigger fog machine, or at least some type of fan in order to push out the fog through all of that hose, especially once the fog starts to get cool. The other thing that I noticed is that it would be much easier to make this type of machine take up less space by running a single tube on the ground and chilling it along it path, rather than this coil business. But, to each his/her own, and I'm sure that this project would work reasonable fine.
Having spent all summer working with fog machines I have fallen in love with them. The amount of different looks that can be created and just how a bit of fog can change the hole dynamic of the scene is phenomenal. And this article creates a perfect and cheap solution to make everyone's haunted houses or Halloween parties that much cooler by taking your normal fog machine and using to create thick and lower to the ground smoke. This is also a wonder and cheap solution for theaters running on a budget or a fast fix for a tech team if a designer or director want the fog on stage be more concentrated.
Let me first start by saying, this is a great idea. I've seen the exact same design before though. I actually built a fog chiller using this exact design for a show in high school. It works really well! However there is one big drawback to this type of chiller that made it less than ideal. Because it relies on ice to chill the fog, the ice melts. Basically the fog output looks great while its working, but it has a fairly limited working time before its no good. Also, in this quantity, ice is a consumable. That means that before every show, you have to have 4 huge bags of ice stored and you have to constantly be replacing them.
IT DOESN'T WORK! or at least not the way we wanted it too. also, did you know fog juice is really slippery? when i was a freshman in high school this was a project a senior was working on. I was new to tech theater and didn't realize what the purpose of this contraption was initially. but once it was explained the concept was great. cool down the fog and it will stay low. but you have to think, why is the fog hot to begin with. the answer, because that how fog juice is turned into fog, it is practically boiled and then the vapor disperses. now, when you cool it back down it slowly turns back into a liquid. so when we had the fog chillers mounted US for the witches transition in Into the Woods, we needed someway to keep the fog low. we taped a plastic bag over the mouth of the chiller and the the ground to force the fog low but then we discovered that fog juice is slippery and people were starting to slip, luckily we found this out during rehearsal. we also found that the fog chiller did work to an extent, as in it took some of the low fog to the front of the stage and it poured down off the stage and then it dispersed in the air. but we were fortunate enough to have an orchestra pit, and the musicians were unfortunate enough to have fog. as the fog neared the front of the stage it poured into the pit (which looked awesome) and then dispersed in the mostly closed pit. did we suffocate any musicians? no, were we close, yeah, you could say that. it was in the end a success, after a lot of tweaking and it was a great learning experience. another fun fact, make sure the fire alarm is off even when you are testing the foggers.
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