Making a football field foggy

[Stephen B Diaz]

I'm trying to achieve a foggy football field at night type of look. Don't have access to a local rental house so I'm looking for DIY solutions or relatively inexpensive things I can buy for the shoot. I have a Hazer, but mostly use it indoor, I don't think it'd work too well outdoor. Would a fog machine work and give enough volume for the effect or maybe I should get some smoke bombs? Any advice is much appreciated!!!

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

We have an FX guy for this with custom fog solutions and he uses a bunch of those on the shoot with assistants. What ever you come up with you will need additional fast working assitants to prep the scene and maintain the effect between takes plus shooting day with no wind. For wide shots even a small breeze messes up the scene quickly and you run into shot continuity issues. Good luck.

 

[Corey Jenkins]

Also interested in tips to make this look happen on a smaller budget soot.

 

[Quinton Weiskittel]

Not exactly low budget, but he can fog a football field in seconds.

http://www.jetman99.com/home

 

[Curtis boggs]

I'm interested in options here too.

Have a night scene to shoot in the woods
w back light, like to be foggy.

Is there a larger fog machine for this
other then the dinky little ones Guitar center has??

Curtis

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

I think the potential things mentioned above will dictate how much you can actually fog -- think that your wide shots will be difficult unless you do it in post, but your mediums and CU can help. Compressing the background by going longer lenses can also help the effect.

I was on a job where art used a handheld, gas operated fogger/hazer. It was really awesome. Artem, but I can't remember the name of the model itself. I think it was only a couple hundred tops to rent + purchase the canisters we used. It puts out a pretty insane amount of fog. Check out this video for reference: https://vimeo.com/182851862 - background of the hiking shot at 0:24, wide shot at 0:33 (it was just a light spray but you can see how it'll move), background of fishing at 0:36 (heavily and repeatedly fogged), background of hammock shot at 1:14.

Hopefully that helps.

EDIT: Also, that middle shot of the soccer fields looks like it has some heavy diffusion on both the lights and the lens. Using some strong black pro mist or other diffusion filters can really help get some of that softer blooming. All depends on the desired effect.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Fogging or smoking a football sized area is a pyrotechnics or stage show dry ice type solution.

Either that or having multiple hazers with distribution systems, and even then wind/containment is going to be an issue.

The question really are you wanting smoke, or diffuse light sources in shot, or both. Because as has been pointed out Promist filters can achieve some of the diffusion you are after that is evocative of smoke but if you want light interacting like it does you probably need to be talking to an event staging company if you are anywhere but a major film production centre.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Maybe this is a redundant comment, but would it be expensive to find a location which is reliably foggy? Otherwise, would the client be happy with a filter (as Craig suggested)? One DP said that they breathed on a clear filter to get this effect, so basically that's the same as a fog/mist filter.

Of course real fog is three-dimensional, so the real thing cannot be cheated - unless you shot in 3D and added haze in post using the 3D data. Just a thought.

Edit: Or, find a 'small' stadium (outdoor will do) so that artificial fog/haze will not be swept away by wind so quickly. I'm just firing off suggestions, and just so you know, I've never had to do things like this before.

 

[Stephen B Diaz]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I'm still unsure what I'm going to do at this point. Might just skip the wide shot and stick to CU with a smaller fog solution and maybe a filter. I checked out the artem which looks like a heavy duty mosquito fogger. This sounds crazy but I'm tempted to buy a butane insect fogger for $60 and fill it with non-toxic fog solution just to see what happens haha...might just work!

Any filter recommendations to check out??

 

[Frank Glencairn]

You would need a few of them for a whole field, but they will work - best bang for the buck.
But you need several assistants for keeping the fog during the shot, usually when the camera doesn't roll, or off screen.