It's a Wonderful Life Phony Snow

[ZipperJJ]

I’m a big fan of the movie, and live in Ohio’s “snow belt” and I never thought the snow looked off. I was intrigued to learn how the snow was actually made, but all of the snow looks plenty real to me.

[Uncle_Jocko]

I personally always thought the snow in It’s A Wonderful Life looked a bit off and kind of “sprayed on,” (and as a native Iowan, I’ve seen plenty of snow), but it never pulled me out of the movie. And I did know that snow creation method earned them a technical award from AMPAS, so it was ground-breaking at the time.

Now, you wanna see cheap looking, sprayed-on “snow” in glorious color? Check out Running Scared, with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. Some of the early scenes (particularly at a cemetery) trying to depict a Chicago winter just have fake snow sprayed willy-nilly, on trees and gravestones and cars … it’s really terrible. Fantastic movie, though.

[terentii]

@BubbaDog

That snow got his creator Russel Sherman the only Oscar for that film.

If you have 9:30 to spare here is a link to an interesting story narrated by Mike Rowe about why this snow was created.

Mike’s story also reveals the fate of Mr. Sherman and WHY “It’s a Wonderful Life” is even known to people today much less a perennial classic.

… And now you know THE REST OF THE STORY!

[Civil_Guy]

Native Southern Californian here. I can’t vouch so much for real snow, but (if the OP has been sufficiently answered) I would be interested in opinions on another kind of fake snow. Have any of you seen the ‘snowing’ effect they try for in Disneyland’s Main Street? Well, yeah, the air temperature is 50 F or so, so my mind knows ‘this absolutely isn’t real’, but there’s enough, well, fog in the air that my heart feels wistfully “but what if it were, wouldn’t that be special”. But what do you think? Have you ever seen it and do they manage to pull it off?

[JohnT]

Looks fine to me.

What takes me out of those scenes is the crappy CGI “cold breath” on the characters - it’s like they didn’t even try!

[Siam_Sam]

@Cardigan

I was recently involved in a water cooler discussion about the classic holiday film, “It’s a Wonderful Life” and while dissecting what was good and bad about it, mentioned the phony snow. My coworker seemed genuinely surprised and didn’t seem to realize the snow on screen was fake. The coworker in question recently moved here (to Michigan), but spent much of his life in Georgia and claims to have seen snow on more than one occasion.

As someone who has lived most of his life in Michigan, I’m quite familiar with what real snow looks like, and assumed that anyone who has seen snow in person would know that it doesn’t usually adhere to vertical surfaces in quite the way one sees in that film. Don’t get me wrong - the snow in that film looks more realistic than snow in other films from the era, but it’s still plain (to me anyway) that it’s not real snow. It simply requires the audience to engage in a bit of voluntary suspension of disbelief.

Dopers, were you aware the snow in that film was fake? I mean, did it ever momentarily enter your consciousness ‘yep, that’s fake snow’ or does it come as some kind of surprise?

Not only is it fake, but that scene and others were reportedly filmed in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record. They were sweating. I’ve known about this so long that I don’t remember if I ever thought it looked like fake snow originally.