# How to "magically" transform a painting?



## NeenahTD (Dec 22, 2009)

We are in Pre-prod for "Picasso at the Lapine Agile" by Steve Martin. In the show, a painting of "sheep in fog" must magically transform into Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon". This change is done in full light, and the sheep painting is onstage the whole show until the transformation at the end of act II. We are trying to figure out a way to do this where we don't see the mechanism of change...thus "magically".

Other's ideas:
- The easiest way to do this, and the way most other productions we've researched have done this, is to have the picasso painting on the back of the sheep painting and it rotates in place. Although cheap and easy, This way does not have the "magical" quality we are looking for as you can clearly see the painting rotate.

- Another way we saw was to use a rear projector which projects the sheep picture the entire show and then dissolves to the picasso. The change-over has the desired magical effect, but we don't like how the projected sheep painting looks. It is obviously a projection and makes a black out impossible without dimming the painting as well. This wouldn't be terrible except that the sheep painting is visible the entire show (1.5 hr+), and we would like to put other artwork on the wall that isn't projected. In our opinion, the obvious projection and other artwork make this idea look like a cheesy slideshow.

Our ideas:
- Our first great idea was to use a "fogscreen" in front of the sheep painting. A fogscreen is a curtain of mist that you can project onto (if you've been to the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, you've seen one of these in the beginning of the ride with an image of Davey Jones). The cool thing about the fogscreen is that the sheep painting is real, but the picasso can still appear in its place and the picture quality has the magical look we're going for. The bad thing is that rental is beyond our budget and building one seems to be difficult and the end product very questionable.

*- Our best idea so far is to use a painted scrim. The sheep painting is painted onto a white scrim, placed in a picture frame, and only lit from the front at a high angle to make it opaque. The picasso painting is then placed US a few inches from the sheep scrim (as if it was in the same frame) and lights are mounted in between the two. When the transformation happens, the sheep lights are turned off and the lights that are behind the scrim turn on to light the picasso. This should make the sheep translucent enough to see the picasso...(I think).


Has anybody done anything like this? I'm especially interested in the scrim idea...can anyone tell me if this will work like I'm thinking? Any other ideas for a "magical" transformation? All thoughts are welcome.

Thanks.


Jason M. Stoll
Assistant Technical Director
Neenah High School
Neenah, WI


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## DuckJordan (Dec 22, 2009)

does anyone have a small tv or monitor? yes youd have to have it dim out for all your black outs but with a slideshow it is really easy with the LCD's to do a black out since the light given off by the lcd's is minimal compared to a projector.


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## Bobby (Dec 22, 2009)

I wonder if you could get a plasma tv or something. mount that on the wall behind the picture frame and then just feed a video with the images to it. Just a thought.


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## ajb (Dec 22, 2009)

The scrim idea is going to be your best bet at 'magic', provided you have a painter who's capable of executing it.

Another idea is to have one painting slide in front of the other--like the rotating idea, it's not as magical, but should be less conspicuous. A little bit of misdirection on stage will help. The fog screen idea seems like it would be tough to blend into an otherwise physical set.


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## MarshallPope (Dec 22, 2009)

You could do something similar to the changing billboards, which are made up of how ever many thin sections that rotate at once to change the image.While not quite "magical", it may give a better effect than simply sliding one image over the other. 
If you do go with the sliding idea, it may be more effective (not familiar with the show, just throwing out ideas) to drop the sheep painting, mounted on heavy plywood, from in front of the Picasso, sliding down a metal track. A sliding latch at the bottom could be used to release it. This is what is often used in the haunted house industry when they want someone to pop out from "inside" a painting


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## Anvilx (Dec 22, 2009)

Though I have only read of it Peppers Ghost might work for your application.


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## NeenahTD (Dec 22, 2009)

Great ideas all, thank you!....I forgot to mention that with the size of our stage (50'w x 20' h) and house (1600 seats, we won't fill all but the audience is a ways from stage). This painting will need to be quite large. We've thrown out 4'x6' as a rough estimate.

Has anyone tried the scrim idea?....I know it would work with 10+ feet of space in between the two but I'm not sure about 10+ inches and using the same picture frame to frame both paintings. Plus, I'm concerned about the quality of the painting on the scrim (although it is only sheep in fog so not alot of detail).

p.s. we won't paint the picasso, that will be printed and taped together. We'd only have to paint the scrim.


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## kiwitechgirl (Dec 22, 2009)

The scrim idea was what I was going to suggest. It may take some fiddling with lighting angles to get it exactly right, but you should be able to make the scrim go translucent without too much difficulty. We did something similar for an Edgar Allan Poe production where we turned a painting of a beautiful girl into a skeleton and it worked almost perfectly.


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## rochem (Dec 22, 2009)

The scrim idea should work well, although you'll have to be very careful with your lighting angles, both on the scrim and on the rest of the stage. Is there a blackout shortly after the transformation? While the scrim effect would work, after a while of staring at it the audience will begin to see the original painting. If you can drop the first painting out of sight (possibly the way MarshallPope suggested) shortly after the transformation, the audience would never know how you did it.


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## FatherMurphy (Dec 22, 2009)

To expand on the lighting angles question a bit, one problem with scrims is that they are usually transparent enough that when front lit, even from a steep angle, some of the light hits and bounces off of what's behind the scrim, showing the upstage image to the audience early. To combat this, you'd need to cover the Picasso with some neutral toned fabric that can be whisked away just before the reveal (black would probably be enough darker than the Picasso that the change would be noticable).

Your other problem with the scrim solution is one of viewing angle - will the people sitting to either side of the auditorium see the Picasso centered well enough in the frame, or will the depth needed for the lighting push the Picasso too far upstage, leaving the same sort of gap, similar to incomplete side masking? Can you add to the edges of the Picasso to cover the difference?

Yet another way to deal with the scrim is to not deal with it - 'Sheep in fog' could just be plain white scrim, and you mount the Picasso on a upstage/downstage track. Start it many feet upstage under blacks, uncover it just before the cue, and push it downstage for the effect, stopping only when the Picasso touches the scrim. With luck, the scrim will then drop out of view as the colors of the Picasso assert themselves. This, of course, assumes you have 'many feet' of upstage to work with. You'd get a bit of a zoom effect along with the dissolve, which may or may not be considered a bonus effect.

A tracking panel idea that might be worth considering would be two plexiglass covers, one from either side, that are dusted with white spray paint to give a gradient from clear to opaque. Pushing them towards center would cause the sheep picture to dissolve to white, the crew swaps to the Picasso, and the plexi is pulled apart again, and the Picasso dissolves into view. A hanging sheet of clear plastic might work as well, and be less expensive than plexi (and less limiting in size). You wouldn't be dissolving straight from sheep to maidens, but at least you wouldn't see the images moving.

I think there's some UV paints that are transparent in normal light that could be used to make a dissolve effect, but changing the lighting to allow the blacklights to take over would probably be fatally counterproductive to your desired magic effect.


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## cutlunch (Dec 23, 2009)

Have you thought of using the Samoiloff technique?


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## chrispo86 (Dec 23, 2009)

They have youtube blocked at work, otherwise I'd find a video, but I saw something just the other day that you could probably use (it's pretty much a practical application of the scrim concept you were talking about). On the Disney Cruise Lines they have a resturant called Animator's Palate. When you walk into the resturant the walls are all black-and white. The walls are a perforated metal with sketches of disney films drawn on them. Over the course of the meal, they dim the lights where you are sitting, and bring up the lights in the background. I think the show I saw said there's about a 22" gap between the faux wall that you see at the begining and the painted wall that is illuminated over the course of the meal. As the lighting changes, the colors in the background begin to fill out all of the sketches on the faux wall, and by the end of the meal the resturant is in full color. I'm sure you could do the same thing to switch out paintings. I definitely think you're on the right track with the scrim, but if you'd like a visual of what it could look like, google Animator's Palate. Good luck!!


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## NeenahTD (Dec 23, 2009)

Thank you everybody for the great input. We have decided to make the scrim idea work and will be testing out the best way to accomplish this. I'll try to jump back on here to let everybody know how things went and what worked well and (of course) not so well. Thanks again.


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## jamesarnold140 (Dec 23, 2009)

It's not my position to give out someone else's creative ideas,but you might want to seek out Mary Novotny at the Children's Theatre,Minneapolis,Minn.


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## MNicolai (Dec 26, 2009)

Wildfire Effects makes paint specifically for dual images. Under normal light, one painting is visible, and then when a UV light is shot at it, it changes the painting completely. It takes a pretty skilled artist though. 

Check out the effect here.

Otherwise you can probably contract Wildfire into making prints of your dual layer image and then have them ship it to you. Going with Wildfire will make it an extremely awesome effect if done right, but it'll also probably be fairly costly. The UV paints cost over $100/gal, plus then you need the UV light rental as well.

The Wildfire paints work very well, but if you go that route, don't spend several hundred dollars on the paints and then use _el cheap black lights_ to make the effect visible. You will not be happy with the results. The high quality UV paints are only worth the money if you're willing to pay for the high quality UV lights to go with them.


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