Capturing sparks, smoke etc

Steve Mclean · April 29, 2009

Hi, my first post here and i'm looking for some advice if possible. I need to create a shot of a cigarette flying through the air and striking an object. If possible i'd like to capture the cigarette in motion as well as the embers, ash etc as it strikes the object. This is also going to be a slow motion shot filmed on Super 16.

I was thinking of shooting against a black background but wondering how i can setup the lighting for this type of shot so i can still capture the cigarette. Is it just a case of separating the lighting from the background. Any ideas or tips would be most welcome.

Thanks.

Scott Fritzshall · April 29, 2009

It sounds like you're shooting this as an element to be composited into a plate, is this correct? If so, is there a reason you can't just get this in-camera on set?

If you're doing it as an element, you want to have the lighting on the cigarette be as similar as possible to the lighting on set. Shoot it against an unlit duvatene (or however you spell it) backdrop.

Steve Mclean · April 30, 2009

Thanks for the reply Scott. Yes, this is going to be composited. The reason for shooting separately is the object it's going to strike is a human face, an eye to be exact, camera looking from the side. If i could figure a way to get this in-camera it would make things much easier. Perhaps some way of using a dummy head and replacing with the actual head though i think that would be tough to do. Any thoughts?

My only concern with the shooting separate is because we're using Super 16, film grain and whether we can capture at high enough fps without having to boost the lighting and having too much motion blur.

Scott Fritzshall · April 30, 2009

It will be grainy, but you can deal with it. You'll probably mostly be doing luma keying for the sparks, and you can just roto the cigarette. You'll have to boost the lighting according to your fps; there isn't any way around that. Motion blur isn't really a problem; you'll deal with that either through keying or by adding the appropriate falloff in your roto. You might want to shoot additional spark elements so that you can add them to taste, since you might not get the look you're going for with a single shot.

Steve Mclean · April 30, 2009

Thanks for the help Scott.

John Sprung · April 30, 2009

Another thought -- If you have access to welding equipment, wafting a little extra oxygen in the path of the cigarette may make it burn somewhat brighter.

-- J.S.