Haze help

[Dominik Bauch]

Have filming coming up and plan to use DF50 for some light atmosphere.

Im filming in a medium sized open plan office and a number of smaller rooms.

Anyone have good tips on how to get a nice consistent base?

Once thats in the pocket, typically how long before having to add more haze to keep consistency?

Really want to avoid moving haze or indoor fog look. Haze is done so well on many episodic shows, hoping some veterans can tell me what the haze workflow looks like pre rolling camera.

 

Many thanks in advance, any help or tips greatly appreciated.

[Stuart Brereton]

DF50 has a long hang time in the air, so it's not too difficult to get a consistent look. Get the hazer running 10 or 15 minutes before you are ready to shoot. Move it around if you need to, and have the grips waft the haze around with flags. Remember that the haze will look different depending on how it's lit. Backlight will look much heavier than frontlight.

 

Lastly, try to have a couple of PAs assigned to making sure people don't leave the doors to set open when they come in and out.

[Aapo Lettinen]

if you want really consistent look you can either:

 

A: put the hazer to the air inlet of the office space and set it to the lowest output possible, then let the ventilation to spread it evenly to the space. After waiting for it to spread 10 or 15mins or so you can add more haze output if you need more atmosphere.

When you find the correct setting, just leave the hazer there for the rest of the shoot to continuously input the correct amount of haze

 

B: use a blower and perforated layflat tube or similar plastic tube to spread the hazer output to the space. this works if you can hide the tube somewhere and your blower is silent enough. you can use for example 20 or 50 or 100 meters of tube per blower if needed. Again, set the hazer to the lowest setting and wait at least 10 minutes to see how the effect works, then add more output if needed.

 

I have used the B type setting for couple of short films and you can get continuous fully stable and controlled haze atmosphere for even 12 hour days with it without needing to manually add haze after every take or monitor anything... even outdoors if the wind direction and speed does not change.

(for example this indoor set from 11.35 onwards. layflat tube is near the roof of the small building going half circle around the room, and the blower and hazer are located outside. We shot two 10hour days there with the same hazer settings (26% haze output and always the same fluid in 5l canisters) and never needed to worry about the haze continuity when we got the hazer setting right at the start of the first day https://vimeo.com/212097418 just setup, adjust the first time and shoot as long as you want :lol: )

[Aapo Lettinen]

if using layflat tube you might want to use a relatively small hazer and do the perforations with a needle first so that the haze spreads to the air closer to the tube without making "haze fountains outside the image" or anything. assistants can spread it further with flags but it may work without any assistance if the blower air output + hazer output + tube lenght + hole sizes are in good balance.

 

if you can't get low enough output from the hazer you can set another unperforated tube to the same blower which you can use to vent some part of the smoke outside to lower the amount ending in the room.

 

Layflat tubes may easily catch mold after used for this purpose, you may want to throw them away after the shoot

[Aapo Lettinen]

if needing to add more haze to some shots you can either add more hazer output to the tube and/or lessen the amount vented outside through the secondary tube if using any... or use separate additional hazer to add more temporary haze over the base haze you are spreading via the tube.

 

I recommend at least trying to use the layflat tube method, it saves hours of manual work and is quite easy to work with if you just have someone who can move the tube out of the shot when needed. and you need to have about 1hr time to test it and get the perforations right before camera rolling on the first day on the set

Edited May 8, 2018 by aapo lettinen