Concert Lighting, 3rd Edition

19 SMOKE AND PYROTECHNIC EFFECTS

A very important ingredient in concerts (and television music award shows), especially with rock & roll and heavy metal bands, is some type of medium that allows the beams of colored light to be seen by the audience. This is especially important for air light or air graphics, or when moving luminaires are doing beam animation. The patterns created over and around the musicians would not be visible if we didn't have some means to accent the beams (Figure 19.1). Theatrical smoke or, more correctly, what appears to be smoke is actually not smoke created from combustible materials. Even though Rosco Laboratories received an Academy Award in the Scientific and Engineering category in 1984 “for the development of an ...