Watching some old “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” episodes – good stuff! In the first series, aired in 1964, you often see a “smoke” or “poison gas” or “knockout gas” effect. The smoke is VERY thick, almost milky. But nowadays, you never see that kind of smoke. It seems to have gone entirely out of fashion.
Howcum? Dangerous? Messy? Smells bad and actors hate it?
How was it done, anyway? It looks almost like “liquid chalk” but rising through the air.
It looks a little similar to the colored smoke in the movies “Modesty Blaise” and “Danger Diabolik,” but milky-white and (I think) a little thicker.
Trinopus (why, yes, I am a fan of bad spy movies…)
It looks like standard Dry Ice fog to me (which hugs the ground better than other fog machines). There are health effectsassociatedwith using fog machines.
Hm… Might be… To my untrained eye, the smoke effect on U.N.C.L.E. looked much thicker, heavier, “chalkier” or “milkier.” Almost more liquid than gaseous. Dry ice fog is semi-transparent, but the stuff I’m thinking of is strongly opaque. Also, it lasts longer: dry ice fog dissipates very quickly. And, also, the stuff I’m thinking of comes in bright colors, and I can’t think of any way to dye dry ice fog.
Or…maybe I’m wrong? Would dry ice fog behave differently if, say, collected in a bellows and squeezed out under pressure?
There are different fog machines. Some are just there to diffuse a little smoke which will underline the light directions and effects (often done when you want a Vermeer like “light from the window” thing). Some are real dense fogs. Over the years, what is legally possible to use has changed. One of the popular fog mixes was the A+B Fog, which is now totally illegal because of its alleged toxicity.
You may have seen one of those early effects fog.
I bet it was smoke smoke, not ‘fog’ or smoke machine mist. Smoke bombs can be made with pigments that produce bright colors, or even dense white smoke, as seen inmultipleyoutubevideos. Being the product of combustion, I can’t imagine that it is fun to work in or around; you would to be upwind of the stuff if at all possible.
Slight hijack, but in movies and TV, when there is a fire where you have people running around trying to escape the fire and smoke, is something other than “real” smoke used? After all, people in real fires often die from smoke inhalation, so I would guess they use maybe steam, or something safe for actors to work in and around that would produce no breathing danger.
brossa: by george, I think you’ve got it! The YouTube videos you linked to definitely seem to be the stuff. Back in the good old days, actors would let that stuff gush right into their faces (although I doubt that they inhaled it!) It was very effective, and that makes me think that it must have been done away with for safety reasons (as Capitaine Zombie suggests.)
Thank y’all!
Trinopus (slightly less ignorant now)