[00:00] Hey guys it's Lauren, Dean of the RocketJump Film School, and since it's October we are doing some spooky DIY tips. So first up is how to create fire flicker.
[00:16] Say you're doing a scene that needs some firelight, like you're sitting around a campfire and telling spooky ghost stories, but fire's a little hard to control and slightly dangerous. A good alternative is to actually flicker your own light.
[00:28] Tons of professional movies actually do use this effect. You can take a look at Skyfall for the end sequence when the house is burning, and Roger Deakins actually used huge stacks of lights connected to a dimmer board to simulate fire
[00:40] and to control the exposure and get the amount of light he needed. So while professional flicker boxes and dimmers can allow you a greater amount of control, we can show you a couple options that you can do at home.
[00:52] So this is an Astro 1x1 light panel, and this is great because it has a dimmer already built in. a lot of light panels do. To create that fire look, we actually have a CTO gel, which is color temperature orange.
[01:05] So when you're operating the dimmer for a flicker firelight scene, you wanna keep it kind of unpredictable, you want it random. So the advantage to having a flicker box is that it will randomize all those little flickers for you, but it's kind of expensive.
[01:18] So the better alternative is to bribe a friend with pizza or food. they better be a good friend because it gets boring So if you have access to light panels these are a great option but these aren always available to everyone and they a little bit pricey So what can you do with like 30 bucks
[01:38] You could probably use any normal desk clamp that you have at home, but we actually recommend one of these lights. These are clamp lights that you can get at a hardware store for around eight bucks. And this is a normal incandescent bulb.
[01:50] The next thing you'll need is CTO gel. You can purchase these online. You can go to expendable stores or a camera equipment store. So I'm actually going to fold this up twice so I can get a deeper shade of orange.
[02:02] Feel free to play around with different colors of gel if you want it more red, more yellow, more orange, or even a mixture of the three. The last thing you'll need is a household lamp dimmer, and you can get this in a hardware store for around 10 to 12 bucks.
[02:16] These are not industry grade dimmers. These are more for household bulbs. They're not gonna take a lot of wattage, but what we're using them for, it's perfect. I'm gonna clip this onto my light.
[02:30] Toggle, does that read? And there you go, the three pieces you're gonna need to create Fire Flicker.
[02:43] Ah, dang it, Joey! you