HOW TO MAKE IT ‘RAIN’ WITH NO BUDGET

In my previous post I shared about how my team and I managed to shoot complex underwater sequences on my film I REMEMBER YOU with a tiny budget. Today I wanted to share about our experience making it ‘rain’.

Since the film’s plot heavily touches on the supernatural and water plays an instrumental role in the love story, it was really important for me to have rain. Metaphorically I wanted water to separate and reunite the lovers.

Anyway, this all sounds like a phenomenal concept until you realize how much it costs to rent a rain tower… My producer – also VFX supervisor – and my line producer begged me to reconsider and take the rain out. At that point I had already had to compromise a lot and in my gut I just knew that rain was needed no matter what, so I had to make my case and fight for it. Thankfully my team understood and stood behind my decision.  So, after some brainstorming, my producer came up with a great, inexpensive idea: A hose!

Here's our star PA on the ladder with the hose as actors Stefanie Butler (Stranger Things) and Joe Egender (The Night Of) get ready for the scene!

Basically the idea consisted of having a PA standing in a ladder close to the actors holding the hose up and carefully spraying the water. This only works on close ups and medium shots because the hose wouldn’t be able to cover full wide shots. For those, we would rely on VFX rain which looks pretty good and it’s a fairly easy effect to use.

This was a tighter shot so we didn't need the ladder!

Now, the challenge in using a hose is that you still need a water supply. We were in a public park with no available faucet and renting a water tank was not an option. So, we had to buy a long hose and beg a neighbor to let us use his faucet.

 A little advice if you are planning to use this trick:

-       Make sure to cover the camera! Ideally with an underwater camera housing if you can afford it, if not you can use a plastic bag like we did.

Here's the plastic bag that we used to cover our Red Epic camera!

-       For close up and medium shots, make sure to spray your actors’ faces and bodies with water before rolling since no rain VFX will be able to give you the effect of touching a surface, for example: Hair, face, body, etc.

-       Whatever the costume for your actors is, make sure to get a least a couple of them. You might want to get more in case you need them to start each take dry.

-       Keep in mind that anytime that you have to wet your talent, it’ll take time to fully dry them and re-do their make-up afterwards, so schedule your day accordingly!

Something very interesting to point out was that adding real water to the scene made a big difference in the performances. Even the actors noticed it! The first couple of takes which were shot dry for plates and safety didn’t have the same emotion as the ones when the actors where reacting to the rain falling on them.

Here's a still of raining sequence! Actress Stefanie Butler did an amazing job!!!

If you haven’t already, check out the rain sequences in the film and let me know if they look good to you! I REMEMBER YOU is now streaming for free on AMAZON PRIME!