Inky sky (Close encounters of the 3rd kind)

[Bryony]

Hi all,
I’m trying to find out how the dark brewing sky was achieved in the film ‘Close encounters of the 3rd kind’. I’m refering to the scene where the boy disappears and his mother runs out of the house to look up at a dark sky. Somebody told me this is done by pouring oil or ink onto water and shooting the billowing shapes that occur from underneath. It was a very vague explanation. Does anybody have anything closer to the truth? or, a technique that can well creat the same kind billowing shapes where the 2 substances don’t mix?
Thanks,
Bryony

[Fusion CIStudios]

They used a huge watertank with a very thick opaque liquid. They used jets to force the liquid into the water creating an effect of clouds forming. They then matted the final shot with an optical printer. They shot it at a high frame rate (90fps or more) with a 65mm film camera.

[Michael]

You do NOT want to work with a cloud tank on a contemporary post schedule or budget, if you can possibly help it. Believe it or not, 3D fluid dynamics and volumetric rendering are much cheaper and just about as fast if you factor in the enormous amount of prep and low productivity of cloud tank shoots.

Visualize a tank filled with 4,000 gallons of purified, filtered, chlorinated water. Now maintain it at a constant 50 degrees or so, and wait until ALL the internal currents and turbulence damp out — about 2 hours. Now take your 20-50 gallons of 80 degree pigmented water (or other liquid) and pump it thru your rigs, while running film through a camera at 90-240 fps (did I mention that you have the whole thing lit with about 500KW of light to maintain a decent stop?), and manually manipulate things perfectly. Oh, it wasn’t perfect? Well, now drain the tank, throw out the cloudy water, clean the tank, refill it, and do another take. Repeat until you are out of money. And don’t forget to pay the P&W to your union crew members… It does look lovely though…

[Vit Sedlacek]

in the old days they use to do it with a tank and a bottle of dettol with camera running at high speed…heh…:)…but yeah i think its done in 3d now…like in the movie ID4…cheers…merv

[Michael]

ID4 clouds were liquids in a tank….

[Belisaire Earl]

Thank you everyone for your very detailed explanations.

I am going to use the effect on a much smaller scale so will probably just pour dye into the tank and see what I get. In order to vary the effect is it better to change the density of the water or of the dye and how do I do this to both? I am guessing I could add sugar/salt to the water..?

As you can see this will be a very budget experiment and I thank all you industry people out there for your advice!

Bryony

[guillem ramisa]

Bryony wrote:

Thank you everyone for your very detailed explanations.

I am going to use the effect on a much smaller scale so will probably just pour dye into the tank and see what I get. In order to vary the effect is it better to change the density of the water or of the dye and how do I do this to both? I am guessing I could add sugar/salt to the water..?

As you can see this will be a very budget experiment and I thank all you industry people out there for your advice!

Bryony

Artbeats has some cloud chamber stock footage. Don’t know what yout budget is but it might be something for you?

http://www.artbeats.com/prod/search.php?pg=1&kw=clouds&fm=&ct=

Good luck,
K.

[tomas madrid]

A recent example of water tank effects was in Ghormenghast. They used a water tank to create atmospheric depth in their minature shots. Although I could find no web articles discussing this, there is this book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Gormenghast-Making-Television-Fantasy/dp/0002571560

[Author]

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