Methods for "smoking up" an exterior.

[gsmith89]

I will be shooting a project a few weeks from now, which will take place in the woods at night. The mood is uneasy and suspenseful, and will be lit by a fair amount of broken-up, soft blue light. I will keep the key light a more neutral white, at a decently high contrast ratio to my blue fill, to give the effect of a full moon.

What I am unsure of, however, is obtaining the look I want for the background of the woods. I would like to keep the air lit with a fair amount of blue light (as if there is a light fog or moisture in the night), rather than have it fade into complete darkness, but will need some sort of false atmosphere to achieve this. I have used fog machines and FX Haze spray for various applications before, but never for an open exterior such as this one. Smoke cookies, which I am not familiar with, are another option.

If anyone has experience with this sort of look, or has an idea of how to maintain a consistent haziness to an exterior, your input would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some images that will give you a decent example of what I'm going for:

This is too over-lit and stylized, but does showcase the haze at the treeline that I want.

Jurassic Park's back/side-lit rain also has the effect I want (although also too bright).

Here's a decent example of the broken blue fill that I want coming through the trees.

 

[rolling rock]

Try 'dry ice'. You could hide strategic packets in the branches and wait for the effect - the ice to melt and let gravity do its thing. You would probably have to reload the ice often. Bring lots and have enough people to place them - they melt fast.

rolling rock

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

I'm hoping you'll have a few 6k HMIs to light up the woods at midnight, cause that is what it is going to take.

 

[Garion]

I would recommend going to your local DJ (disco) rental center and look for a mains powered cannister (not fluid) smoke machine.

I used to own a mains powered fog machine which used a 1kw heated ally core and smoke fluid held in pressurised cans. Once i had heated up the unit i could unplug it and carry on using if for a while without power (if noise is an issue).

I dont know your location but try googling smoke/haze units, they come in many differant sizes ... I know some of the big rigs do it this way.

Heres a random site i found just now as an example so you can see what the units look like, there are many more than these :-

http://www.smokemachines.net/buy-smoke-machines.shtml

i would recommend asking your local rental centre first for their advice tho

p.s. ive tried using smoke pellets....dont ...they really really stink !!, and the smoke aerosols work but i think would be lost in a wood setting.

cheers

Andy

 

[craigbowman]

Rent a smoke machine. We did this a few months ago, including making it rain at the same time and yes use HMIs. We found that a number of 1.2k HMIs strategically placed did exactly what we needed.

For the blue moonlight effect on the shot below we used HMI placed high up the hill and used daylight balanced lowel caselight 4 for fill and then changed colour temperature in post.

 

[Snoman13]

I don't know what your budget is but you could always try adding in some atmospheric stock footage in AE if you're having trouble smoking a large area and keeping it the way you want.