Seeking on–the-budget projection scrim suggestions

eight

What is the current feel on the street about the cheap projection nets used to produce (incorrectly named) holographic effects?

Local fabric store?

Aliexpress?

~~Hologauze?~~

Thanks.

Fred

I have done the local fabric store version a few times, it was really cheap to get a few different samples for playing around with. The biggest downfall of this route is trying to make a nice wrinkle free screen that you can pack away and use again. It needs some kind of tensioning system. Depending on your set, lighting, and projector strength you can play around with different colour meshes and also using double layers. The stuff was so cheap (I actually went to a locally based online supplier) I could get a few different versions to play with.

It is also worth checking out showtex, they have some cheaper products that are a bit better quality than what you will get from a random online store as well as wider roll sizes for bigger screens (hard to find otherwise).

I would say again that making a tensioned hangable frame is the bigger issue, if you have that you can try any material easily.

eight

@fred Thanks, very useful.

What is the widest fabric one could expect to get from the local stores?

mark_m

@eight

I have just been working with HoloGauze on an R&D this last week. It is pretty amazing, but like everything else it needs to be tensioned off properly along all four sides in order for it to be wrinkle free and thus invisible.

We'll never be able to afford HoloGauze for our tour, so the alternatives we're planning on looking at are:

https://www.wearekaleida.com/h...

Which is probably also expensive, but claims to be very durable, which HoloGauze is not.

And as Fred said, Showtex have some things, we're specifically looking at Pepperscrim:

https://www.showtex.com/en/pro...

The advantage of going for stuff from established manufacturers rather than the local fabric shop is that the material will have already been fireproofed, or rated, or whatever, but basically it's not an issue using it in a theatrical setting, whereas with 'unbranded' gauze you might have to convince a fire officer that it's safe to use in your performance context.

Fred

@eight I found 3m wide rolls, lengths were 50m.