I hate digital smoke.

I do. It can be pulled off, but I don't have the time to make all the masks to make it look right, which is extremely irritating. When Fang and Talon was shot I begged for a fog machine or some dry ice and some foam board to fan it.. but I didn't win. So, I've done my best to create a fake smoke effect(more like a haze) for the first episode of F&T.

The context is that the wizard, Selvig, played by Tom Lockman creates a large amount of smoke in order to facilitate a good get away from some soldiers. The effect consists of three shots.

NOTE: This footage is not color corrected.

In the first shot, Selvig casts the "Smoke" spell. Here's the base plate.

Here show the tracking I've done so that the effect spawns from Selvig's staff.

I used that tracking data to attach a simple particle system to the staff. I made my own smoke sprite to use as the particle. You can see it trailing staff after Selvig has swung it in an arc.

I then added a glow on top of the staff's end, using the same tracking data and a blending mode. It brightens as he swings the staff around. I did this by changing the glows opacity.

As Selvig's staff hits the ground off screen, the smoke come in big puffs around them. I used some keyed stock footage of some smoke and matted out Vance(played by Max Savage) in the foreground to give the footage more depth.

 The second shot was the real troublesome one. There are four moving people and lots of detailed plants that would have taken far too long to mask out like I did with Vance.

I sort of pictured the smoke seeping up from the ground, so I placed video of keyed ink drops in different places in frame. It also puts SOME depth to the smoke with smart sizing and placement. Whenever a character walks in front of one of these smoke/ink drops, I simply faded out the opacity.

Knowing that Selvig would be obscured mostly by the smoke, I did a quicker job of the smoke trail on his staff and glow.

 I used some more keyed and tinted footage of smoke with a blending layer on the top of everything to show the smoke spreading and saturating the frame.

Then, I added another layer of keyed dust footage in the same fashion to add more variety and again, help fill the frame.

The last shot was pretty simple. Just a close up of one of the effects soldiers.

I layered some keyed footage with blending layers and tints.

Instead of using a thick smoke puff, I time warped some keyed ink in water. It looks a bit more like cigarette smoke, but gives a smokey look without obscuring the actor much and fits the close up more. Also, the next scene is a fireside scene and this smoke transitions with the fire smoke better than the others for the fade the director/editor used between scenes.

And that is the nightmare that is faking smoke on a quick deadline. Glad that's over. Nothing can be worse than that... wait? What? What's that? I have to do cg arrows hitting the ground and people in the next episode!? Oh..  
...   
 Challenges are good right?

I did do more effects for this episode, but as this post is super long I think I'll talk about those later.