How to Make a Fake Stage Light

Video Transcript

"I'm Shaun O'Rourke with Eleven Bravo Productions. And I'm here at EUE Screen Gems Studios. One of the largest studio complexes on the east coast in Wilmington, North Carolina. And today we're going to talk about how to make a fake stage light for a theatrical production. Well I've got a trick here. If you're doing the stage performance where you have to have a car driving around one of the key things to do is to get yourself some cheap construction lights, okay? These are going to replicate headlights of a car, okay. You're going to set them on dolly track on a wooden platform. So lets say somebody's going to get hit by a car. Okay, you're going to have somebody offstage with a rope attached to this platform and they're going to pull these construction lights out of the darkness as if a car is coming, okay. Now this is going to be a very cool technique, scary technique but a safe technique. Because you're not going going to want to have a real car on stage hitting somebody. It would be very dangerous. But by setting up dolly track, putting a platform down and putting these construction lights, as long as you have enough extension cord. Make sure the stage is dark, pitch black so you can't see anything and pull these along. They actually used this same technique in the original E.T. As he was going through the woods they actually had a red light on railroad tracks that were laid down with a platform and they just pulled it along and the camera followed it as if this little red heart was glowing through the woods. So what I'm telling you is if you've got a need in a play of having someone get hit by a car in the dark have these lights out there. It's very effective, it's very scary and people are going to think you're getting hit by a car on a stage. Now that's one way to use fake stage lights to get your point across in your play. I'm Shaun O'Rourke with Eleven Bravo Productions and I hope that technique helped you figure out how to make a fake stage light effect come to life."