There's no business like snow business

December 22, 2017 11:43 AM

How is snow made in movies? Here's a behind the scenes look. Did you know they used to use asbestos? Yes, really. For It's a Wonderful Life, they invented foamite (the stuff in fire extinguishers). In Dr. Zhivago, they used marble dust. Salt and flour were used in Charlie Chaplin's silent film The Gold Rush. Nowadays they use snowcel or CGI. Not going to have a White Christmas where you are? You can make your own snow at home!

Website of a special effects company. Tons of examples, 1990s design, not recommended for mobile.

posted by AFABulous (10 comments total)

When Touched By Roma Downey, came to my neighborhood, around Christmas one year, blocking the street for weeks: they used shaving cream and shredded potatoes, to make show, snow.
posted by Oyéah at 12:23 PM on December 22, 2017

Doesn't count unless it's cold
posted by serena15221 at 12:50 PM on December 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

This issue was just discussed in a TCM Channel twitter thread, WRT this Astaire-Rogers film scene. Someone said Hollywood had started phasing out the use of that awful substance by the time of the Fred/Ginger movie. But maybe not, per the article above?

Also, I assume more recently the "snow" is often digitally enhanced.(?)

But whatever, movie snow falls into the category of Things That Don't Fool Us Onscreen, kind of like when someone fakes playing a musical instrument. If you've spent a lot of time in a cold climate, you know there are so many kinds of snow. That video shows that they do try to make a little variety, vapory snow v. big flakes. But most of the time I can't get it out of my head they filmed something in SoCal on a 85F day.
posted by NorthernLite at 1:05 PM on December 22, 2017

(Oops, yes you had a link re: CGI. :-O Carry on.)
posted by NorthernLite at 1:07 PM on December 22, 2017

Movie snow never turns to slush. That just looks wrong, seeing a flake land on something even slightly warm, and... just stay there.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 2:02 PM on December 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Chris Pratt discovering the hard way that "that's not snow".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:14 PM on December 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Movie snow never turns to slush.

Yeah, and if it's set in a city, you never see dirty grimy snowbanks.
posted by AFABulous at 3:22 PM on December 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't know if its in there somewhere, but I've seen a standard Hollywood actor's contract, that has a boilerplate paragraph saying that if the actor gets a flake of fake snow in their eye, they go home for 3 days, with pay.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:26 PM on December 22, 2017

My local mining town, too low in the California foothills for real flakes, employed a bunch of foam based fauxsneaux ejectors which looked pretty as the real thing coming down in the street lights at the tree lighting festival. Wise to their ways we cautioned the young ones that perhaps these were not the sort to catch on your tongue.

What no one could imagine is the ungodly horror of one landing in your ear as it drifted about so prettily. My ears have endured all manner of noises and inundations and infections and insects, none burrowing, but my God is having a sizzling fragment of foam snow land in your ear on its own level. No bigger than a fraction of a pop rock, it's as if you had unleashed an entire packet into your ear from thin air.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:10 PM on December 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I grew up near Oxford and now live near the South Bank in London, so I'm used to film crews getting in the way all the bloody time. The one occasion I remember was from about 1984, when I was walking between Broad Street and the High Street in Oxford in late September and, turning the corner, found that the entire Radcliffe Camera square was under a foot of (fake) snow, up on the rooftops and everything.
posted by Grangousier at 6:49 AM on December 23, 2017