Shooting "cold" breath

junct

junct

Active member
Hey there,

I have a night shoot coming up pretty shortly where I need to capture the cold breath of my actress. I'll do at least one close up where this will be prominent, but it would of course be nice to have her breath visible through the whole scene. The house we're shooting in is pretty damn cold, so breath is actually visible in normal circumstances. But when we have a crew and lights in there, it'll get a lot warmer (also unsure if "normal circumstances" would have her breath visible on camera).

I'll also be using a fogger for some subtle diffusion, so that may make it a little harder to see whatever there is.

So any advice/tips/suggestions? Briefly considered smoke, but it looks pretty distinctly different.
 
Continuity could be a nightmare - you might have perfect conditions but then lose them 10 minutes later. Would it be possible to shoot outside, perhaps with a fake wall behind (assisted by shallow focus) so the audience thinks the shot's still inside? That would at least minimise changing temperatures due to lights etc.

If you had a bucket of money, I'd suggest doing it digitally in post, to give you perfect continuity and stop your actors freezing to death.

But the simpler option is to simply not have visible breath. Other than 'looking cool', will it really help the film?
 
Cheers all. Unfortunately there is not the budget to shoot in a freezer, or outside with a fake wall (and impractical as we follow her around the house). Post is unlikely - but it's not my project (I'm just in charge of this scene - hard to explain how htat works :p), and I know a vfx artist is doing some work, so I can maybe try get that added to his list - but I'd rather not rely on that.

As for necessary - not absolutely, but it's not for the point of looking cool (well, maybe a little). We need to sell the space/location as a cold student flat. We're doing this by having the character wrapped up a lot, and a few other things, but it would just be another visually nice way to show that.

But from my googling and this topic, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to do it, other than maybe post. As a general thought, would it be confusing/distracting/seem fake if we did a close up on her breathing into her hands with her breath visible (but then not be overly visible in other shots)?
 
The hot breath of your actress is actually what you want to capture. To increase the contrast in temperature between the air and her breath, she can sip a hot beverage. The background should be dark in order to see the breath. (If shooting smoke, you'd want a light background.) Depending on the mood, you may wish to use a slower shutter speed like 1/30 if shooting 24p. Expose for highlights when you are lighting her breath.
 
There was some old BTS story (Lean? Zhivago??) I heard as a kid for some winter scenes... the actors had cigarettes for closeups.

I'd think that if you had condensing breath for establishing shots and key setups, it might be all you need to sell the idea of "cold". Would an audience miss it? Hard to say.

But I wouldn't guess it to be a post nightmare unless you're talking an entire feature. Find some reference or shoot some in a walk-in cooler. Look for how it acts at the angles you need. Shoot some smoke or steam at the angles you want. Hit them with hard directional light with a very very black BG. Drop 'em into AE with "screen" mode. Use levels to dial in the density. You'd need a way to pump or fan the stuff so it looks like real breath, but I'd think it could be pretty real. (I did a huge keying project with tons of smoke plates a couple years back... ended up with a mac pro in the studio with a "smoke" setup and I just shot and tweaked plates as needed. Smoke machines, cigarettes, incense sticks, smoke-in-a-can, dry ice, duvatyne with holes cut in it, etc etc and a Leko... it was all kinda fun really. And very cool to shoot, stick the card in the reader, drop it into AE and re-shoot/tweak as needed.)
 
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