smoke screens

[rickmaersk]

I saw a picture in an old ( c 1970) American Cinematographer with a dry ice screen that you could walk through. It was like a water screen but the smoke was sandwiched by 2 faster flowing layers of air. I think it was at a Japanese stand a world Expo event. There was a shark projected on it.
Most of these old projection ideas get reused ( like AC/DC riffs). I just wondered if anyone had seen it done or tried it.

Rick

[sleepytom]

i've seen vide of dry ice screens - very simple really - get some dry ice and put it on something high - the vapor falls to the ground is quite a controlled manor.

i don't recommend walking through it unless you wrap up warm

[oxygen]

i have been projecting on a smoke-screen this summer on the Dok-A boat.
In-Between the big transparant plastic screens there is smoke from a machine blowing.
I noticed it just needed a tiny wee little bit of smoke to become "sort of" holographic.
This screen was pretty big+deep (..) and therefore harder to project at, bec. it needs more light and its harder to focus as we projected from the back.
(Next year we will use the smaller ones we allrready made for some testing.)
Funny thing was also that u became aware of your own focus as it was changing when u moved past it.
Same time it was ennoying bec. out of reach from 2 meters u hardly could see anything, except a big blurry mess...

hard to get an impression of it on this picture but it gives an idea, at least I hope...

[oxygen]

hmmm and the picture...
(in the back u see me + vj solu)

[alangeering]

Found it works best when smoke has something to flow down - like a wall or screen. Screen has bonus of being nicely reflective....

Oh, and you'll need a lot of Dry Ice, so having a screen behind can cover you if you run out!!

[trilogy]

you might want to try one of the heavy fog machines. not quite as qood as dry ice but it doesn't have the safty or storage problems that dry ice has.Jem,MDG ,rosco all make such machines

[alangeering]

if you're doing searches for "heavy fog" you may also want to search on "chilled fog" or "cooled fog".

[Meierhans]

I tried this some time ago, and was very unsatisfied by it. Perhabs what we did wrong was to close up these screens to heavy.
The Result was: Flog fluid condensated on the plastic screens, rendering the already unsharp and dark picture into pure pure mess. I could have projecting into foggy night without any screen...

The idea about the dry ice and the 2 faster moving air layers sounds great. Perhabs this also could be archived from floor with a normal strong fog machine? Do you have a link to this contruction? Projecting fire in front of a live act? :nod:

[videobox]

I think it was back in 1978 or 1979 there was this club band called "Heyoka", or something like that. They used dry ice fog pumped into a PVC pipe with holes punched in it to create a sheet of fog to project their laser. The beam was probably not much brighter than todays laser pointers, but back then, a laser show with a club band was very rare. They just did typical spyrograph/oscilloscope/lissajous patterns driven with two waveform generators and audio amplifiers. Not the best thing for video, but for a laser show it was pretty cool.

[djjef]

simple address. not so simple price. I was quoted US$114,000 plus shipping... ouch.

http://www.fogscreen.com/

[seex]

It seems that walking trough is their main point here, i can see how this can come handy at a coroporate event, id have that just for the logo.

I think in a club a dry ice solution over white or gray screen wuld be much mor effective and much simpler too. I guess the main issue wuld be the angle of the screen it wuld need to provide a flow of fog that is constant enough over the projection feeld.