krispyduck Posted May 5, 2017 Share Posted May 5, 2017 Hey, New to the forum ,Lampy from Dublin, big hello to you all!!! http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif Looking for ideas on how to disguise Aladdin's magic carpet effect of flying. If you've done this Production please let me know how you went about it, be high end budget or low. Any inspiration appreciated. Ive heard of Hydraulic extension arms , behind scrims to projections. What worked best for ya? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted May 5, 2017 Share Posted May 5, 2017 Oooh, a newby to patronise, goody.Welcome to BR Kris, enjoy your time here. BR has been going for a while now and I rarely if ever see a completely new subject so the first thing for new members is to spend some time learning how to use the search function without smashing your laptop against the wall. (Bit frustrating!) In the box up there under your name just type "magic carpet" in the box and THIS thread appears. The trick when searching is to be creative in the words and phrases because you would never believe the range of disparate titles even simple questions can be found under. When you get time it is worth flipping through the forum checking out what has been discussed before and it is always, always worth searching no matter how esoteric you think the topic might be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted May 5, 2017 Share Posted May 5, 2017 and weirdly, as the search function is clunky, many people even use Google, with Blue Room added - as this often finds topics the forum software can't. That other topic stalled because the problem is one of expense. The kit we use has to be safe of course, and the type of thing that gets used needs a forklift to get it off the truck, umpteen people to move it, and loads of paperwork. Having used these effects fairly often, I seriously doubt there is a low budget option that you'd want to put a person on. The other thing is they will be amazingly heavy - do the physics on the weight of a person, the length of the arm to get them off the ground and the weight of the counterweight to balance it out. I did see one a few years back that an amateur company had built, based on an old 50s film studio camera dolly - with a pushable section and short arm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin D Posted May 6, 2017 Share Posted May 6, 2017 I agree that to do it properly cost serious cash. However I saw this done by an amateur group and was 'conned' like the rest of the audience and had to go ask how it was done. They had two trucks, one was a mirror image of the other and a stepped stage. SR they had a gentle slope at the most downstage position to about half the height of the higher platform. The truck moved off by being hauled from to SR climbing the gentle slope until the truck was off stage and parallel with the truck at the higher level. Cast quickly swapped trucks and appeared to 'fly' at the higher level across to SL. Carefully focused lighting completed deception. Landing was the reverse procedure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 Probably a large part of the effect is the concealment! Very careful lighting with well placed shadows to hide black cloth and gauze. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 The very best magic is often the simplest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Young Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 Hi Kris, I've done both ends of the spectrum with this one. The high-end options usually involve Kinesys and an actual flying carpet. However, it's also just as effective to have the actors sit on a platform behind a gauze, with some carefully shuttered X-light to achieve great results! The cheaper option actually works really well. Make sure you've got a really nice dark stage and a nice gauze. Put a little platform behind the gauze, a black one ideally, and then use low level X-light to light the people not he platform, but shuttered off the gauze and any surfaces etc. Make sure any spill goes off into a sing or behind a black leg. A little low fog can also help with the mystery. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunray Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 Hi Kris, I've done both ends of the spectrum with this one. The high-end options usually involve Kinesys and an actual flying carpet. However, it's also just as effective to have the actors sit on a platform behind a gauze, with some carefully shuttered X-light to achieve great results! The cheaper option actually works really well. Make sure you've got a really nice dark stage and a nice gauze. Put a little platform behind the gauze, a black one ideally, and then use low level X-light to light the people not he platform, but shuttered off the gauze and any surfaces etc. Make sure any spill goes off into a sing or behind a black leg. A little low fog can also help with the mystery. Good luck! Hmmm, I've come up with an idea that I don't think will work but even so I'll put it forwards. Use a projector to make the scene move around the carpet rather than make the carpet move around the scene. Rather like the Chitty touring play.You'd need to get the carpet and actors up high so the ground can move around under them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted May 7, 2017 Share Posted May 7, 2017 Sunray - actually is does work and can be quite effective - in fact a combination of the stationary platform behind gauze combined with projection of moving whisps of clouds and a city below onto the gauze would be a very effective way of imparting motion. Add a nice fibre starcloth or similar in the background and away you go. A whole new world has the advantage of being a night time scene - you can get away with a lot when you can have a relatively dark stage. The current Disney version of Aladin uses a flown platform with multiple winches - the rig was developed by Tait Towers and can travel at quite extream speeds - and also put extreme force on the venue it is installed in. Disney and a couple of project managers from Tait came out to look at a venue I was managing and they had significant concern that the fly tower would not be able to withstand the horizontal forces if there was ever an eStop situation. Scary stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted May 8, 2017 Share Posted May 8, 2017 The Disney one has had the inevitable malfunctions that occur with high tech effects. In this video the carpet has flipped upside down with the actors underneath, and one of them is clearly not handling the experience well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted May 8, 2017 Share Posted May 8, 2017 The Flying Carpet in Disney theme park Aladdin (ie that video) is a completely different technology to the carpet in the musical, which is in turn a different technology to the promo flying carpet used to promote the films (designed by a very good looking FX designer who's name I'm too modest to mention http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) Minor technical note also, the musical Aladdin flying carpet was designed by Jim Steinmeyer; Tait were involved in the technical implementation and ongoing maintenance/operations but the design is Jim's t Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitlane Posted May 8, 2017 Share Posted May 8, 2017 20 years ago we did it like this:- It was a UV scene. We had a small scissor-lift from Edmo. It was on wheels and had a battery powered hydraulic lift mechanism. Total height of lift was maybe 2 metres or so. On top of the lift we mounted a large spring; the type you get in kid's playgrounds. On top of that was a wooden board. The ninja operators 'flew' the UV painted carpet and laid it on the board. Aladdin and Jasmine climbed on top and, hanging on to handles, were lifted whilst another ninja pushed the trolley around the stage and operated the lift. The actors controlled the roll and pitch by shifting their bodyweight. Meanwhile, I was driving the massive UV dragon that was attacking them. If you have Peter Dean's book on Production ManagementI think there is a photo of us testing it (I think I took the picture!) I'm not sure if it would pass a Risk Assessent today but something similar could probably be made to work safely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted May 10, 2017 Share Posted May 10, 2017 One from my past, which gave a really great effect. A pro theatre stage had a built-in trap that could be lowered and returned, the trap deck and everything was counterweighted - so not a village hall effect I'm talking about here. But such a good effect, worth mentioning. The effect: Magic carpet is a rug that actor unfurls and places centre stage and all get on it. Much muttering magic words etc. The carpet starts to rise and fall before eventually rising to a height of about 5 ft and then flys off stage with the occupants on it. The gimmick: The trap is preset in the down position, with a custom black art infill truck making up the height to stage deck height. Rug gets placed on infill while a few extra weights are chucked on the trap counterweight cradle. After some magic up and downing of the whole thing, the trap rises back to its up/closed position and fills the hole back in. The truck is wheeled off stage artistically by a black clad ninja, the whole thing carefully cross lit at 'rug and occupant' height and above. Was a cracking effect. Perhaps something similar with a truck / black art but maybe without the trap mechanism? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewg112 Posted May 16, 2017 Share Posted May 16, 2017 We worked with a fairly similar situation when we produced 'Peter Pan'. We could not possibly fly any of the characters so played with gauze and projection. What worked best was the simplest. We used a white sharktooth gauze and projected a video of the London skyline from the back of the auditorium and had cast members literally laying on a blacked out trolley behind the gauze. We then used cleverly focused side lighting to light the side of their bodies and faces only. This worked really well, mainly because it was so simple. In the end we were actually fortunate enough to have someone join our group who filmed the characters with a green screen and drop them into the video which we then projected. This allowed us to get on with a scene change behind it http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunray Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 We worked with a fairly similar situation when we produced 'Peter Pan'. We could not possibly fly any of the characters so played with gauze and projection. What worked best was the simplest. We used a white sharktooth gauze and projected a video of the London skyline from the back of the auditorium and had cast members literally laying on a blacked out trolley behind the gauze. We then used cleverly focused side lighting to light the side of their bodies and faces only. This worked really well, mainly because it was so simple. In the end we were actually fortunate enough to have someone join our group who filmed the characters with a green screen and drop them into the video which we then projected. This allowed us to get on with a scene change behind it http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif Sunray likes this BTW if we dropped the T in PAT test it would sound more like: "testing, 12, 12, test." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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