Special effects on the movie screen are becoming more awe inspiring every year with technological breakthroughs and artistic know-how. Special effects in the theater can be just as awe inspiring with technology, but the artistic know-how is more important. With some help, you can create great theater special effects that can blow your live audience away.
Instructions
1. Make good use of your semi-transparent scrim. It is a gauzy curtain that is positioned toward the back of the stage, and it appears opaque when the lights are trained directly on the front of it. When the lights are turned on behind it, this can help you create some wonderful special effects in your theater.
2. Use a projection of a face or scene behind the scrim for a great special effect at the end of "The Wizard of Oz" or in a creepy thriller. You can paint the scrim in these scenarios to have the scrim serve as your backdrop in the theater and the projection site.
3. Build trap doors into your stage to help actors appear as if from nowhere. You can create a great special effect in a play like "Dracula" or "The Phantom of the Opera" with trap doors and smoke machines. The smoke can cover the actor's entrance and create a spooky special effect that will make your audience gasp.
4. Take a page from a horror flick, and use gore to enhance your next production of "Hamlet" or "Macbeth" in your theater. Use sacks of red paint taped to the actor's body to give realism to a dying scene. As the actor is stabbed with a fake blade, the paint spills out creating a gruesome special effect.
5. Follow the lights and let them transform your theater into an underwater wonderland with the right gels. They can be purchased in many different colors and shades to help your lights work together to make the stage look like moving water and your actors look covered in blue.
