Thread: Lightning demo using color organ unit

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This video connection shows how my lightning turned out using a color organ unit, cd player, two 150 watt CLEAR lights, (I believe they show the best light), a 1000 watt sound system. This is one of the rooms in my haunted barn (house) for this year. I always did lightning outside in the cemetery, this is my first fake window setup.
There are a multitude of lightning sound tracks. I will be testing others and some of my edited versions using two tracks, one to trip the light and one track for just the sound.

YouTube - Lightning demo 2009

I hope you enjoy this.

looks and sounds great! The only thing I would change is the placing the lights above the windows or diffusing them somehow.

But, Yeah they look good!

Looks awesome! One other idea for the proper delay...I used a cheapo delay guitar effects pedal last year. Cost me about $25 on amazon. all you do is plug one of the stereo outputs from your CD player or whatever into your lightning generator (I used one of those lighting FX machines) and plug the other into the pedal and then set it to only have 1 delay, and none of the original (dry) signal. Then you get the flash of light a second or so before the sound comes.

Originally Posted by eanderso13

Looks awesome! One other idea for the proper delay...I used a cheapo delay guitar effects pedal last year. Cost me about $25 on amazon. all you do is plug one of the stereo outputs from your CD player or whatever into your lightning generator (I used one of those lighting FX machines) and plug the other into the pedal and then set it to only have 1 delay, and none of the original (dry) signal. Then you get the flash of light a second or so before the sound comes.

Thanks, I'm working on making a two track recording. One track with static for the lights and one sound track for thunder. It's not finished yet.

Thanks for the suggestion

Would you possibly want to share your sountrack(s) when you're done? I know I would be interested in having some clear and good quality thunder soundtrack, as I'm sure would many others.

What did you use to make the lights flash?

Originally Posted by cingularpat

Would you possibly want to share your sountrack(s) when you're done? I know I would be interested in having some clear and good quality thunder soundtrack, as I'm sure would many others.

What did you use to make the lights flash?

Hi,
Thanks. The sound track is an old one, I'm not positive where it is from. I believe I used the ones from Your Ultimate Categorized .WAV Source. There are some nice ones to choose from.
The lights are controlled by a single channel color organ. Very inexpensive to make. That can be found here- Electronic Goldmine - Electronics, Circuits, Robots, LED, Solar, Kits & Surplus Electronic Parts.
The sound track I have on a CD . I split the sound out, one to the color organ box, which controls the flash of the lights, and one goes to the speakers. Which is a surround sound system, plays the base sound well.
Last year this was outside, and someone had thought it was starting to rain. They didn't know I was making the sound.

Looks great and is highly effective to build the feel of your scene. I have 2 of the lightning FX units and I don't think I made mine as convincing as yours is. Now I think I am going to have to do some tinkering...

This is pretty great! It may be just the video doing this, but one thing I notice is the light from 'outside' the window seems a bit focused too much. I'm seeing what looks to be a round light source. Perhaps you could try aiming the light source for a more indirect cast of light, such as ground-up or top-down. It looks like the bulb is right behind the curtains in this vid. Maybe even the shade from the lamp can help diffuse things. Nit picking, I realize. Other than that, bravo!

Dan