Shooting at night with smoke

T

tommh

New member
Hi guys,

I'm starting production on a low-budget student short, set to film February-March next year. The majority of the film takes place at night on the empty smoke-filled streets of a council estate in Northern England - its a kind of dreamy, surreal journey across a gritty landscape, in which a house fire has injected smoke into the surrounding streets. We're planning to shoot with a HVX200 and Letus, and generate smoke with a smoke-machine.

If it can be pulled off, there's potential for so much beauty - orange streetlamps casting light through smoke, silhoutted characters emerging from smoke, etc...

Its a very ambitious shoot, and the problem is that we're all students, with fairly little professional experience.

So, is there anyone who can offer any advice with regards to filming at night in an urban, relatively low-lit environment, and/or with smoke - in terms of lighting, practicalities, or anything else that you might have to offer? Anyone worked on a similar shoot before - how did it turn out, did you encounter any major problems?


Thanks,

Tom
 
First, you don't want a fog machine; you need a hazer. Fog doesn't dissipate through the air and stays fairly low to the ground so it's not going to be visible on camera. Second, if you're looking for light beams effect and things like that you're going to need some powerful fixtures to punch through the haze, like 2k or above, preferably HMI. Since you're filming at night with an adapter, having lots of light is pretty much a prerequisite. How are you powering the lights anyway? Generators are bulky and loud, and if it's an actual neighborhood people aren't going to take too kindly to the noise and bright lights; also it's going to be hard to record audio. The orange sodium vapor street light aren't going to appear too good on camera because of their odd color temperature.

Nightshoots are tough and you really need a ton of equipments and an experienced crew to make it work. I would seriously evaluate what kind of gears you have available versus the actual amount of stuff that needs to be done and the amount of crew you have before jumping into it.
 
We're shooting on streets we know, so we're going to run cables from houses to power our equipment, meaning no need for a loud generator - we also have access to alot of lighting from our university, so we're covered in that sense. We don't have an experienced crew, but I'm thinking with alot of research and test shoots, and alot of hard work and willingness for some compromise, we can pull it off. I'm looking into the differences between fog machines and hazers... thanks for the response!

Tom
 
Sorry but I've done this with a fog machine and it worked perfectly. You just need a long extension chord.
HVX200 + LetusEx + Party Fogger + Orange Streetlamps
http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/private_screening_u_SD.html
http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/private_screening_L_SD.html

Maybe real fog stays close to the ground. Just try to get a $50 party fogger to stay close to the ground. Not outdoors, no way. Indoors all you need isa wafting board to kick it up into the air.
http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/private_screening_CCDVX_SD.html
http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/private_screening_R_SD.html

Alternately, The way they did this in Frailty was to take PVC pipe and hose with small holes in it laid in the grass and they ran a fine mist of water through it and literally made their own real fog.
 
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