LEXINGTON,
Ala. — Picture the Manhattan skyline filled with Nike swooshes. Or
the golden arches of McDonald’s gently drifting over Los Angeles.
A special-effects
entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with
foamy clouds up to 4 feet across and shaped like corporate logos —
Flogos, as he calls them.
Francisco
Guerra, a former magician, developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles
filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and
pumps them into the sky.
The Walt
Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped
like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando,
Fla., Guerra said.
“It’s
a shock factor when you look up and there’s a logo over your head,”
said Guerra, whose company, Snowmasters Inc., makes machines that churn
out fake snow and foam for Hollywood movies and special events.
He developed
Flogos at his small factory in northern Alabama — a perfect place
for research and development, he said, partly because there aren’t
many people around to ask questions about the foam shapes that float
above the building on test days.
A Flogo
machine works a little like a Play-Doh Fun Factory, the toy kids use
to squeeze colorful putty into stars and other shapes.
A boxlike
contraption produces a white foam in a big round tub and forces it upward
through a stencil. Once the foam is several inches thick, a metal cutter
slices it and a faux cloud floats into the sky.
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Max Scott sliced star-shaped
floating logos, or Flogos, at Snowmaster Inc.’s headquarters in Lexington,
Ala., last month. That was a prototype machine. The finished machine
automatically slices the Flogos. Walt Disney World has signed up to have
Mickey Mouse cloud heads floated there.
MARK HUMPHREY | Associated Press
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“You
want some wind because you want them to travel,” Guerra said. “If
there’s no wind they just spiral upward slowly. We’ve got a ghost
(stencil), and on a calm day it looks like everyone is going to heaven.”
The company
is working on a version to spit out 6-foot clouds.
The foam
is environmentally safe because it’s mostly water, air and a soapy
agent that creates bubbles, Guerra says. Flogos pop just like bubbles
and disappear when they hit a tree or building, sometimes leaving a
powdery residue that blows away. A single
Flogo can travel as far as 30 miles and as high as 20,000 feet, Guerra
says, and a machine can produce one every 15 seconds. Guerra says a
half-dozen machines together could fill the sky with almost any shape
a company wants.
Imagine
a line of drifting Flogos shaped like the Honda logo leading to a car
dealership and you get the idea.
Kathleen
Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta,
said it appears Flogos would fall under FAA rules pertaining to events
like balloon launches: a local FAA office would need to be contacted
before a Flogo launch so that pilots could be notified.
The company
has lined up international distributors in Australia, Germany, Mexico
and Singapore. A machine rents for about $3,500 a day, Guerra said.
James
Twitchell, a professor of advertising at the University of Florida,
compared Flogos to airplanes pulling banners over football games, spotlights
with corporate logos and an old imagined scheme to put an advertisement
into orbit that would be visible at sunset.
“It’s
been done before. Well, kind of,” Twitchell said in an e-mail interview.
Matt Leible
of New York-based Generation Outdoor, an agency specializing in outdoor
advertising, said it can cost $5,000 a day for a big banner towed by
an airplane, and skywriting can cost $4,500.
Want to
rent a blimp like Goodyear’s? That’s $250,000 a month, usually with
a six-month minimum, Leible said.
One expert
said the idea sounds catchy, but wonders how Flogos will fare against
a backdrop of controlled airspace, environmental sensitivity and concerns
over legal liability in case something goes wrong, like a pilot being
distracted by a swarm of floating tomahawks above an Atlanta Braves
game.
“I think
people will look at them. The question is what happens after people
look at them,” said Leonard M. Lodish, a marketing professor at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Lodish
said Flogos would no doubt draw attention. But it’s hard to say whether
they will be a commercial success.
Only a
few people have seen Flogos so far, including a crowd at the local ballpark
one day when the company was testing. There was no way to ignore the
test clouds as they floated lazily overhead, said Augie Hendershot,
the Lexington police chief.
“Everybody
thought it was neat,” he said.
The logos that get more
air time
From The Times
: May 8, 2008
LEXINGTON Francisco
Guerro, a former magician and co-founder of SnowMasters Inc, watches
one of his floating logos – branded Flogos – drift away, above.
Mr Guerro has developed a machine that can send foamy clouds as wide
as 4ft and shaped like corporate logos drifting into the sky. The Walt
Disney Company will use it next month to make Mickey Mouse-shaped clouds
at Walt Disney World in Florida, he said. Mr Guerro, whose firm in Lexington,
Alabama, makes fake snow for Hollywood, says the foam is environmentally
safe and pops like bubbles when it lands. (AP) |
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2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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Ex-magician conjures up
Flogos
By AP, London Free Press - Business - Ex-magician conjures up Flogos
LEXINGTON, ALA. —
Picture the Manhattan skyline filled with Nike swooshes, or the golden
arches of McDonald’s drifting over Los Angeles.
A special-effects
entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with
foamy clouds as big as 1.2 metres across and shaped like corporate logos
— Flogos, as he calls them.
Francisco
Guerra, who’s also a former magician, developed a machine that produces
tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into
shapes and pumps them into the sky.
The Walt
Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped
like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando,
Fla., Guerra said.
“It’s
a shock factor when you look up and there’s a logo over your head,”
said Guerra, whose company, Snowmasters Inc., makes machines that churn
out fake snow and foam for Hollywood movies and special events. |
|
Former magician and
SnowMasters Inc. co-founder Francisco Guerro watches one of his floating
logos sail away. (AP Photo) |
He developed
Flogos at his small factory in northern Alabama — a perfect place
for research and development, he said, partly because there aren’t
many people around to ask questions about the foam shapes that float
above the building on test days. A Flogo machine works a little like
a Play-Doh Fun Factory, the $5 toy kids use to squeeze colorful putty
into stars, circles and other shapes.
A boxlike
contraption produces a specially formulated white foam and forces it
up through a stencil.
Once the
foam has become several centimetres thick, a metal cutter slices it
and a faux cloud floats high into the sky.
“You
want some wind because you want them to travel,” Guerra said.
“If
there’s no wind they just spiral upward slowly. We’ve got a ghost
(stencil), and on a calm day it looks like everyone is going to heaven.”
Guerra’s
company is working on a version that will spit out 1.8-metre clouds.
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It’s written in the stars |
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