Monday, January 29, 2018

Digital Fog and an Observation or Two

During production of Jack vs Lanterns (ongoing), there were several scenes that called for "smoke". Smoke machines are relatively inexpensive, but in my experience, they have been unreliable for year after year use, especially if you're not one to dump the juice out after each outing. (I don't trust that the stuff is entirely safe).  When mine refused to work during key scenes on the movie, I gave up.  I wasn't going to buy a third machine and more juice only to add plastic and chemical waste to the world.  Especially not when my friends over Detonation Films  (you've heard me mention them before) have digital smoke, dust and fog packs starting at $11 each.  That's less than one big jug of juice and it works just about every time. (Sometimes the direction can be tough to lock down with an effective "screen" overlay.

So far I have used the fog pack I bought three times and it's not even in shots I had originally planned on using smoke.  They would have been too difficult to run cords, conceal the machine and wait for warm  ups to get done.

I also did some testing and learned something I suspected would be true.  Screened smoke can easily be "colored" in post.  Since the background isn't affected by the color or post lighting changes you can manipulate it more.  This should be pretty neat in a movie where orange is such an important color.

Also, I refer to it as "digital smoke", but really, it's footage of actual smoke machine fog lit and shot in front of a black matte.  So, while not as great and interactive as on set or location smoke, it's pretty good looking. 

It's useful in a number of situations:

1. Better for the environment to blow the fog once and have it for use on many occasions.
2. Reliable.
3. Can be added as an afterthought to a scene which you didn't originally think fog would add something.
4. Safer for actors who may suffer from asthma or other respiratory ailments.
5. Not a fire hazard if misused.

Do I suggest you all dump  your smoke machines and go "digital"? Of course not.  The stuff is great, but there's definitely still a place for physical smoke.  I just think it makes more sense for  your Special F/X person to own, maintain and run the equipment than the writer, director or producer.  You can't afford a special F/X person on this project?  Well, then the savings and ease of use of the digital method is probably for  you.  Detonation Films (link above) even offers a free 9 second sample, which you can use to see how easily it screens into a scene using your editing software.

Random Observations:

So, I've pretty much skipped YouTube Videos for the past few days.  The number of views and watch time dropped for a few days, but then went up.  Mostly on older videos.

Same with the blog.  I stopped writing one every morning because I've been working on the movie and haven't had a lot of good news outside of that to report.  Nobody wants to read bad news.  But the views still grow daily.  Not a lot, but some.  The blog remains active even when I don't.  This is key.  Building a website, channel or blog that has enough content to remain active and relevant when you go through a stretch that you can't tend to it.

Don't expect those numbers to grow unattended forever though.  Drop by every so often, like I just did, and leave some new knowledge, a product review or just update your followers and readers on what's going on in your corner of the world.  It seems to be working here to some degree.

If nothing else, these are helpful notes for me later when I'm trying to figure out if it's worth buying that new pack of F/X footage.

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