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Outdoor Fog effect...?


LX-Dave

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Hi all,

 

I'm currently working on a short film, which we hope to shoot over the summer, but there are a few scenes which I think would benefit from some kind of "fog" effect.

 

The location is in a woodland, so no power is available. what options are there? and the cost need to be as low as possible.

 

one idea I have found is this .

Anyone used something like it?

 

Any help appreciated

 

Lx-Dave

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Without power, either a battery-powered fogger (which tend to be pretty small, so probably not much good for your purpose!) or the "smoke-in-a-can" solution are really your only answers. Will you be shooting from a handheld camera with no additional lighting? (ie, no-one is planning to hire a genny for power?)
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yep it's all going to be shot on a hand-held camera, and there's not going to be a genny. so the smoke-in-a-can or battery fogger were the only options I could think off.

 

I guess my question really is, which is the best choice? how well does the smoke-in-a can work? and if I wanted a battery fogger, and ideas where to get one from?

 

Dave

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Car + inverter + fogger?

or find a friend with a small genny + fogger?

This would have been my recommended solution, too, though bear in mind that to get a decent fog output in the great outdoors you'll probably need a decent medium sized machine - and so will need an inverter capable of driving it. You can get inverters up to about 1000w or so, but by definition these will be sucking a fair amount of juice from the car battery to deliver the mains side. That means you'll need to be running the vehicle's engine or risk flattening the battery PDQ!

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An inverter will flatten a car battery in ten minutes or so when drawing a Kw for a 800w smoker which will be rather small in the great outdoors.

 

In skilled hands fire smoke or pyro smoke would be better -throw some damp leaves onto a small bonfire or look for a white solas rescue smoke -even one approaching end of solas marked life.

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Live Effects offer the Artem Smoke Gun on hire which works on gas without power and can fill am outdoor area very quickly. Click here for details

 

Moderation: I've edited the post to make the link clickable! Also, we ask that if you're recommending your own company, please make it clear in your post. We don't have a problem with you recommending products that you supply, but it does need to be made clear from the outset. Thanks. Anna (mods)

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Having tried it a week or so ago, a 1500W smoke machine can fog my back garden (and its not of trivial size) in about 15 seconds...

 

http://davidbuckley.name/pix/back_garden_fogged.jpg

 

What was quite surprising was that the fog stayed low, but I put that down to it being quite cold outside. That fog is about four foot deep...

 

Ok, so a fog machine will take ten minutes to warm up, and need a building site generator to power it whilst it does, but having laid the fog you can kill the genset and film in foggy silence.....

 

Edited to note that when making a movie, one doesn't normally just let the fog blast, but fog is dispersed by means of waved wobble board. A large fan is an alternative technique that als works well, and is less like manual labour.

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