How can I make a sparkler effect?

smhontz wrote on 6/23/2005, 3:51 PM

I'm shooting a 4th of July drama for our church. It's supposed to look like a home movie from the 60's, with a little girl running around with a sparkler. I can do the old movie effect pretty well, but the problem is, in Arizona, sparklers are illegal so we don't have any. Pretty stiff penalties for using them, too- there's a lot of brush fires right now.

Any suggestions for either a practical effect I can use the day of the shooting, or some effect I can add in post?

Comments

farss wrote on 6/23/2005, 4:13 PM

How odd that they banned sparklers, they've banned every kind of fireworks down here apart from sparklers.
Short of using a real sparkler Particle Illusion would be ideal.
I'd use a small torch bulb on the end of a thin stick, that'll create a point light source that'll add the requisite lighting on the girls face, then use PI to add the sparkles. Just PI by itself will not pull it off cause it will not light the subject.