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TECH NOTES

The Tech for Bubble Magic is relatively simple but some bits are a little odd

Essentially, it is this:
Dark backdrop, lapel mic, lots of light, no wind.

In detail, it looks more like this:
First you should know that I walk on stage with my teeny tripod table and I walk off with it. In between I will stand down stage center and I can not walk away from the table. So all focus is on this one place down stage center. This is something that the person setting the backdrop and the person setting lights would like to know.


DARK BACKDROP:
The ideal is that all (or as many as is practical) of the audience views the bubbles with a non-shiny, black curtain (rented pipe-and-drape?) or flat black painted theater-flats or dark wall behind them.

A solid navy blue or maroon or other solid colored dark backdrop is fine. A white or bright color or a distracting pattern would really make it difficult to see what is happening.

I emphasize "non-shiny" because when I emphasized black, people sometimes missed the central point and gave me a highly reflective black plastic background. The idea is to provide minimal distraction from seeing these ephemermal little liquid figures. The dark backdrop ideally should be as wide as is necessary for the people sitting in the left-most and the right-most front seats to also see darkness behind a guy standing down stage center. It is best if it is as tall as is necessary for everyone to see darkness when looking at head height in the down stage center position.

In the end, know this:
I will wear black myself and I can help the people by putting myself behind the bubble. It's best when this isn't necessary ...

 


LAPEL MIC:
The ideal is a wireless lapel mic. If this were a problem I could work with a mic that has a wire ... or even one on a stand but not with a mic that wraps around my face and hangs there near my mouth, it gets in the way of blowing the bubbles.

I only speak, I don't sing, and if it is an English speaking audience I probably won't use a music cd, tape, or other sound recordings. (Although, if there is a musician available we might add some live music to the show).



2 LIGHT SETTING
Call them General and Special

General:
Bright and white. After that is covered we can add colors to make the Bubble Guy look human and add colors to the reflections coming from the bubbles. But first, let's make sure that it's bright on stage.

Special:
Where possible it would be wonderful to have a single bright light shining down from directly above the performer. A shower or "douche" light ... white. This will be used on certain bubbles (all in the last quarter of the performance) wherein we want the audience to see what is going on inside of the bubbles and we don't want the distraction of the reflections off of the outer bubble/bubbles.

Odd note:
It is often more important to add more lights (numerically) then adding brightness by dialling up the intensity of a few lights. Each bubble reflects each light bulb twice. One bright source would show up as only two little bright spots on the bubble ... this doesn't cover enough area on the bubble to show the people in the back that it is a sphere that they are looking at. Many lights would reflect all over the surface and better show the shape of the thing.


NO WIND:
Bubbles, as you can imagine, move in the wind. You may think that it isn't windy in the stage area. You may be right. Usually the air conditioners/heater vents, open doors/windows, etc. do not effect the stage area ... but we really have no way of knowing just yet. It isn't the kind of thing that you would have noted and held in memory unless it was REALLY windy.

This is not something that we can't solve (we can turn off the system, close the doors, or cover the particular vents with duct tape if need be) but it is the kind of thing that is difficult to deal with at the last minute if we haven't found out about the problem until then.


OTHER STUFF:
The bubbles do not fly into the audience, they fall to my feet unless I blow one out to the public. If you are concerned about the stage floor or have another performer immediately following me on stage, a small, bathmat sized rug will collect the drips. No need to cover the floor with large sheets of plastic ... soap bubbles are thinner then wavelengths of light ... there is not a lot of mess involved.

Access to paper towels and a small trash can for cleanup afterwards, some bottled water to wet my whistle before and during the show ... that's about it.

 

©Tom Noddy and Bubble Magic
P.O. Box 1576   •   Santa Cruz, California   •   95061   •   USA   •  
 (831) 426-2230

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