The most effective lightning (or any other) effect?

[JussiK]

Heaven in London used to have a strange yet captivating lightning effect during the late 80's, something I haven't seen anywhere else since. The concept involved smallish black boxes suspended over the floor. A box would suddenly turn sharply and stare at you with two red sources of piercing light, like a malevolent entity from outer space or a sinister sentinel from an Orwellian nightmare. The movements were not coded to music which made the actions of the gadgets very creepy. Second prize in my book goes to Arena Classic in Barcelona, still in operation. They have a plumbing-like grid of tubes above the floor. First you think it's part of the joint's construction chic design but the system does serve a more frightening purpose. As you dance unsuspectingly along there's an earsplitting hiss and all around you freezing mist bursts from the tubes with brutal force. The effect is shocking and for a couple of seconds you're convinced there's been an underground explosion and you're all doomed to die in the disco disaster of the century.

[Videoskooter]

Jussik,

The first one is a sort of primitive laser, the same we used on the Bumpercars and later evolved into the well-known Moonflowers, where little reflecting shields disperse the colourbeams.

BITD a real lasershow was very expensive and used an enormous amount of electricity.

The second "thing" is a sort of airco, I think, which is also used in gardens and terraces, like Patrick MacNee's home in L.A. I saw it once on TV when they were interviewing him at his home and every five minutes a fog was beamed over their heads.

But I can be wrong of course :o

[QUINNY]

As an aside, 2 weeks ago in Fuerteventura there was the most amazing thunder and lightning storm, which lasted for about 30 minutes. There were literally bangs, crashes and streaks going off every second or so at the height of it, with many overlapping.
In 53 odd years I've never experienced anything quite like it.

I would have thought some powerful strobes set randomly to about one flash a second and activated by a relatively slow pulse of power to 'em, with some smoke billowing around would be really effective.

In one disco I worked, we had some small very bright mini strobes/high luminosity zenon bulbs, set in a chain of about 30 around the dance floor that were very effective. Each bulb followed on from the one before and the rate of the flash (from #1 - #30) could be adjusted. If set to a random control for each 'pulse' it really was stunning, especially if all other lighting FX were blacked out.