Feeling like you’re in a creative rut with your footage? Try using colored smoke canisters to bring some texture and movement to your shots.
I’ve found myself in a creative funk recently. And I feel like all creatives go through this every now and again. I’ve felt like I’ve just been doing the same videos over and over again. So I started brainstorming. How can I make my videos stand out again? What’s that one extra step I need to take?
Recently I’ve been seeing people on Instagram use colored smoke to spice up their photos, and I thought to myself, How cool would it be to use this in a video?
So I bought 20 canisters.
Move with Them
The first thought that came to mind was incorporating the smoke into a dance. So I called a college friend who is a longtime dancer, and I met her with a small crew in a forest near my house. I gave her some music to dance to, and the only direction that I gave her was to move around a lot . . . which is an incredibly silly thing to say to a dancer. (When I work with someone who is a pro in their field, I tend to not give very much direction.) I’m a fan of capturing someone in their element, so I let her do her thing.
(A small note about these smoke canisters: they get hot. So in my best efforts to keep the talent safe, I created some makeshift handles out of PVC.)
I knew that if I recorded at a super-high frame rate, I could do some speed-ramping work to shift movement when I wanted to. So I set my fps to 120, matched the shutter speed at 240, and got to work.
One thing I did not expect was the atmosphere that the colored smoke created. The smoke was thick and colorful, and it hung in the air, creating this crazy dream-like aesthetic. The spinning and twirling of the dancer enveloped her in a cloud of color, and I am extremely happy with how it turned out.
Using the Smoke as a Tracker
You’ve probably seen those videos of skydivers with the smoke canisters attached to their ankles so the camera can track their movement. Well, I don’t have a plane — or a good stomach for heights — so I opted for the next best thing: a longboarder.
I’ve always loved skate videos, but the way that a longboard can carve through a street like a surfer through the waves has always been visually appealing to me. So we found a good slope out in the country. We grabbed our smoke canisters and taped them to the back of her longboard. My plan was to get into the bed of my pickup truck with a gimbal and try my best to get a steady shot. After a practice round, we pulled the cord and tried our first run.
The purple was a great color to use since it contrasted nicely with the gray pavement. Trying to get the timing right was difficult since I was using a fixed 50mm lens, and zooming wasn’t an option in the back of the car, so the run became this challenge of maintaining a safe distance between us and the longboarder while staying close enough to capture the effects of the smoke. And we were in a tight race against the clock because the sun was setting, so we did one more run before we had to call it a day. My goal was to get an effective tracking trail of smoke from the longboard, which we did.
Using the Smoke as a Atmospheric Prop
My goal for this shoot was to incorporate the smoke into a shot that would add an extra layer to the footage. After thinking about it, I realized that staging a protest scene would be a great use for the smoke. So we gathered some actors and headed to an unlikely place — under an overpass in a grassy field. Since you can’t really just pop off one of these bad boys in a crowded city (which I highly advise against), the overpass would give us a good background to stage an urban location while still being remote.
Since the smoke came from one localized source, the actors walking through it provided a nice atmosphere that adds a bit of realism to the scene. We did this by planting the smoke canisters in a fixed position and walking up-wind through the oncoming cloud.
Here’s where a little movie magic came in — a normal shot here would reveal the field, giving away our location and removing the cloak of assumption. But, with a creative camera angle, we were able to get our actors, the signs, and the smoke in the shot with the overpass in the background, selling our imaginary city location.
How Can You Use These Shots?
If you’re trying to figure out how you can use these ideas in your next project, consider this: have you gone out recently and shot something just because you know it would look cool? I mean, painters paint when they’ve got a good vision, writers write when they have an idea — why not shoot something just to shoot it?
And if the “artist” angle isn’t working for you, this is amazing demo-reel footage.
If you’re really trying to elevate your reel above the rest, experiment with your shots to capture something no one else has. This will be your shot, and if you put it out through your social media channels, who knows who will see it? I mean, I posted a small cut of these shots to Facebook, and someone immediately asked me to shoot their wedding.
If I’m being honest, this is not about smoke effects; it’s about adding production value. You don’t need a big crew, an expensive camera, or a huge budget to create a good video. It’s about finding those little additions that bring something extra to your videos. Production value doesn’t have a price. It does, however, have value. So I challenge you to find that small thing to give your video that extra push.
You never know. It might kickstart the ideas for your next big project.
Looking for more film and video production tutorials? Check these out.
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- Video Tutorial: How to Build Your Own Film and Video Sets
- DIY Filmmaking: 7 New Hacks to Help Your Shots — and Sanity
- How to Easily Color Match Any Two Cameras in Post-Production
- How to Make a Roger Deakins Ring Light for Under $150