jasonknightvfx

my day for night tips: Don't shoot in bright daylight. If you can shoot late in the day when there are mininal highlights and no sharp shadows, that would be best. It will be a bonus if the day you are shooting on is overcast. Turn all lights on that are in your scene. Its easier to enhance lights already switched on than to create lights in post. ie. shooting a car - turn the headlights on in the shot. jasonknightvfx.com

Fire effects in CG can be quite convincing, but also time consuming. What I would suggest is setting a car on fire in a controlled envoronment, from a wreckers for example, and compositing it with the car you shot with your actor in it. That way you have live action fire as well as your actor, and control over how much fire you want in your shot because you have both plates to use. Any additional fire can be created digitally (if you have the resources) and added in post to enhance your shot. jasonknightvfx.com

A post/visual effects avenue would be to shoot your actors on greenscreen and create the fog digitally. If your filming medium is not prone to good keying of greenscreen material you could rotoscope your actors to layer the fog behind them. This VFX method was done very sucessfully in 'The Others' with Nicole Kidman (see the special features on the DVD. jasonknightvfx.com

It was done using a lot of CG with a combination of live action. Most of the solid surfaces you see walls/railings/kitchen were all CG, where you see the actors - live action was used. The company involved in the CG was BUF. Breakdown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdbpCc3OLgA jasonknightvfx.com