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Special SFX Section
What Happens in Vegas . . .
The shows may be huge, but these special effects don’t have to stay here.
By Jacob Coakley
No offense to Broadway, but no
one does flashy like Vegas. Not
all of this flash can be taken
back home and put to use at your theatre,
but there’s a few special effects
here that can be recreated just about
anywhere. We talked with three big
shows on the Strip about some of their
special effects and how you might be
able to do them, too.
Phantom — The Las Vegas Spectacular
Despite the technical flash of the
four-tiered chandelier that swoops
around the theatre and a seven-ton
opera house facade that rises from
the stage deck and flies away, the
Vegas presentation of Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s Phantom of the Opera is full
of old-school theatre tricks, just like
the original.
One of the tricks they’ve kept in
the show is the Pepper’s Ghost effect,
in which the Phantom appears in
Christine’s dressing room.
As the stage fills with smoke,
Christine’s mirror changes from reflecting
her image to showing a hazy figure
of the Phantom. He becomes crisper
in the mirror, and eventually Christine
walks through the mirror and away
with him.
“It’s actually a pretty simple trick,”
says Michael Carey, technical director
of Phantom. The “mirror” is actually
a piece of heavy Lexan glass already
split down the middle, sitting on a
sliding track.
“The glass is lit behind and underneath,
to almost give it that look of a
hologram,” explains Carey. Then, as
the room fills up with smoke, the glass
slides out on either side in the tracking
like a sliding patio door, and Christine
can walk through the mirror with the
Phantom.
That’s a trick that can easily be replicated
in theatres anywhere. A new
twist to the show introduced in the
Vegas production is a little more complicated,
but still reproducible, with
a trained staff and the right safety
equipment.
“One thing
that I think is a
great stunt, and
it’s not that difficult,
is the
hang stunt,” says
Carey. During
a scene when
the Phantom is
escaping through
the rafters, he
comes upon
Joseph Bouquet.
They struggle,
and the Phantom ties a line around
Bouquet’s neck like a noose and throws
him from the catwalk, hanging him. On
Broadway and everywhere else, the
show uses a dummy. For this version,
they throw over a live actor.
“The stuntman is actually in a full
body harness,” says Carey. “The noose
itself is sewn into his collar, so it looks
like he’s got a noose on his neck.
There’s a line coming down that’s
covered in hemp that’s attached to
the back of the harness. So when the
Phantom throws Bouquet over, he’s
struggling in the air — then he’s just
hanging there looking like he’s dead.”
During the scene change, the actor
is lowered to the floor. Because it’s just
a harness and a motor, Carey thinks
it’s a relatively inexpensive effect — as
long as you can afford to bring in a
professional like Flying by Foy to train
somebody.
“I sat with my boss the first time
I saw it, and I said ‘How did they
do that?’” Carey says. “It’s an easily
achieved effect, but to me such a simple
thing looks so realistic.”
Right: The Phantom (Anthony Crivello)
appears in Christine’s (Elizabeth Loyacano)
dressing room mirror in this effect.
Brent Barrett as the Phantom
Spamalot
Robin “Bird” Sheldon, lead pyro technician
on Spamalot, is also in charge of
the show’s fog effects. Five Le Maitre
LSG Mark IIs dead hung beneath the
stage provide all the fog for the show.
Three provide fog through grates in the
castle, and two more provide fog further
down
the stage
via two circular
“popups.”
When
it’s time for
the fog, the
circular popups
raise a
few inches
off the stage,
and the fog pours out.
Getting the fog right can be tricky,
a task that the desert doesn’t make
any easier. “If the fog doesn’t get cold,
it rises,” Bird says. “When it’s really hot
and dry in here, the fog will automatically
rise. We have a pre-chill section
before we run it. If that doesn’t get it
to the proper temp, I stop it and run
it again to make it even colder. It gets
cold to the point where it’s freezing
the floor on the pop-ups. So I run back
and forth throughout the show and
wipe down the pop-up areas so the
performers don’t slip on it.”
With some foggers and duct tubing
you can have your own fog effect, too
— but if you’re going to run multiple
machines, Bird advises against getting
a fluid delivery system to all of
the foggers and recommends keeping
the fluid reservoir separate for each
machine.
“Running a fog fluid delivery system,
when the line gets clogged or jammed
or screwed up, you’ve got to follow the
entire line back and find out where it’s
Joan Marcus
Joan Marcus
32 September 2007 • www.stage-directions.com