How to get the right amount of haze

[Tom S]

I've been watching many Game of Thrones clips on YouTube and was impressed by how the haze in the light beams is just perfect, especially without bleeding into the rest of the room. Is there a trick to getting just the right amount of haze. I usually end up too cloudy or too sparse. Any tricks besides fanning to get this smooth balanced haze?

 

[Frank Glencairn]

First of all: Use a proper hazer (not a fog machine) no need for fannying .

Second, use strong lights. Pretty sure they had at least two 4k Fresnel (or even more) in that GOT scene.

Side note: Fluid type matters. There are different hazer fluid types, for different effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrUuqFsvr8o

 

[Chris McKechnie]

DF50 Hazer works wonders, but yea, as Frank said, use a hazer, not a fog machine. And only use hazer liquid.

 

[Marc Wielage]

It's also possible to add "glow" filters in post and confine the filtration only to specific parts of the shot. I would do tests and try it both ways and see which works better. I've worked on many, many projects where maintaining consistent fog levels on set was very difficult (particularly on music videos). On a huge project like Game of Thrones, they would definitely have the time and crew to get the diffusion absolutely perfect on every take.

 

[Mark K.]

Airflow and drafts are the biggest issues to overcome. And mastery of the haze dance is key to settling the atmosphere into a pleasant consistency.

 

[Björn Benckert]

1. Large studio.
2. Hazer turnded on on a constant standing far away from your set. This gives a slow and even fillout. Not a dust cloud that comes in and is gone beofre the take ends. Which is the case in small studios with a hazer that makes a short burst and is then truned off.


3. Post tricks. Shoot a back plate where you wait for perfect hase. Then shoot the forground, send to roto and comp togheter the two plates. Needs moco or fixed camera to work properly. Then you can also do degree of haze, let it roll when the haze increase and use the bits that looks good. For all forground action plates.
Also the shot above like 20sec long without out hase would cost something like 3k USD to get the haze complety done in post in a proper way.


My guess is the GoT guys got their haze down to a science but still add CG haze when its not even etc.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Having a dedicated guy in charge of your smoke machine and not a PA. That's his only job. I disagree with the haze machines over smoke machines. You use them differently, but you can get the same effect. A hazer is useless outside, where as a smoke machine can do a large area quickly. On a stage, we usually set the volume and frequency of the machine to something we like, and then point it into a fan aimed away from camera. Fan breaks it up so it's not a a cloud, and it kind of maintains it's self. Out side I have worked with propane powered smokers that work great. I am a big fan of the Mole richardson fogger because you can unplug it and run around with it and smoke up a huge area really fast. On big exteriors you get three guys with those and you can do a lot. And they almost never catch on fire unlike some other machines. The hissing noise does sometimes freak out horses though ;-)

Nick