Campfire

Within the narrative of the Lady and the Lion, there is a point in which the father goes on the hunt for a rose for his daughter. He travels through the forest and comes across a castle (the tepee) with a beautiful garden behind (the Indian camp), within this garden there is a beautiful rose bush in which he picks a flower from to take home for his daughter. Now when considering this concept in relation to the Wild Western/Native American genre I decided to change this rose bush to a campfire and to have the beautiful rose as a sacred ember from this fire.

Campfire in 1:25 scale form



Mounted onto circular truck measuring 800mm across (scaled to 32mm diameter)

Realising a blazing campfire for the stage

Before attempting to recreate a fire for the stage there are a number of things to consider. The main question being: what is the fire supposed to accomplish? Here I was reproducing a 'blazing' campfire which was not only eye catching but a key interactive element for the performers on stage. It would be there to also set the mood of the scene - reflecting the uneasy yet calming essence of the lion's lair. Another important aspect of design is whether I wanted visible flames or just an indirect flicking glow - as I was reproducing an open campfire I felt visible flames would be correct. For the consideration of colour, every fire is different and every colour has its own meaning. Did I want the colour of a warm glow or a cold heat. I opted for warm glow as after all the campfire I was translating was 'blazing'.

An interesting extract I found in a technical source guide on how to create fire for stage by Michael Powers (see research file for guide) gave me an insight into what the audience would depict from the colours I used.
"The more you use reds, oranges and yellows in flame, the more it will seem hot, searing and arid. Colours in the amber, rose and burgundy range tend toward romantic. Flames that are white hot, blue-white and blue tend to give the audience a feeling of unease, of very intense heat, or strangely enough, of cold heat. Green flashes can give a softening effect to the red range and add an eerie, unworldly effect when used as the main colour or mixed with the white and blue-white flames."

I wanted the fire to seem hot and searing so I decided to stick to the reds, oranges and yellow colour palette. Further research lead me to highlighting these in the Rosco catalogue when looking for suitable colour gels.

These colours would provided the flicking flames within my campfire truck. But how was I going to make these colour come to life in a 'blazing' fire - the answer fans! Further research made me discover how to recreate moving flames for a fake fire.


The illustration above shows how I visualised building the mechanism to recreate moving flames. A small computer fan would be contained and hidden within the campfire logs and operated remotely (preferably having a power supply with the truck - if the set constructors and health and safety would allow it, if not a smaller battery operated fan would suffice.) The air created by the fan would hopefully enable the 'flame shape' colour gels to move. Alternatively having small light and with coloured gels shining upwards at flowing silk would probably be more aesthetically pleasing. (See image below)

Giant Flame Faux Fire Silk



To create the surrounding log structure it would be down to the prop department to create me some authentic looking logs to suit.



One more point, to add realism to the campfire some sort of speaker system could be hidden within the logs to play crackling fire sounds!

See A3 Bible Sheet for Production Realisation of Campfire