A proverb among film crews says that you only have snow when you don’t need it. To ensure that you can have snow at any time and in any envi­ron­ment, arti­fi­cial snow is there­fore used, although ours dif­fers great­ly from the one skiers are used to.

We use a whole range of dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, equip­ment and tech­niques to cre­ate the illu­sion of ice and snow. We don’t want to hide the fact that the real­is­tic real­iza­tion of this illu­sion is one of the most demand­ing artis­tic works in the field of spe­cial effects.

Thanks to our decades of expe­ri­ence in this field and a wide range of tech­ni­cal equip­ment, we can claim to be able to pre­pare even the largest sets perfectly.

Espe­cial­ly with snow and ice the inter­ac­tion of script and loca­tion is very impor­tant, ear­ly advice from us can save you a lot of grief and effort.

BASICS

Unlike real snow, which sim­ply melts, all the mate­ri­als we use do not sim­ply dis­solve into air on their own. For this rea­son, more or less time-con­sum­ing clean­ing work must always be tak­en into account. Arti­fi­cial snow can also per­ma­nent­ly alter or dam­age the sur­faces on which it is applied.

Fur­ther­more, the prepa­ra­tions can take sev­er­al days, in which the set is of course not usable. Dur­ing this time we also need a suf­fi­cient pow­er sup­ply on the set; how­ev­er we will inform you in good time about the over­all pow­er require­ment of our machinery.

ON LOCATION

Before you ask the own­er, let us car­ry out an on-site inspec­tion of espe­cial­ly the exist­ing build­ings. In extreme cas­es this can result in the fact that it won’t be pos­si­ble to per­form this effect in the desired size, type or loca­tion. This is often the case with his­toric build­ings and may require them to be build as a repli­ca film set.

Of course, then the own­er or man­ag­er of a loca­tion must be informed and his (writ­ten) con­sent is need­ed. Obtain­ing this is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion and with­out it we will not start work in any case.

IN THE STUDIO

The essen­tial thing to remem­ber is, that it can be quite labo­ri­ous to restore a set to its orig­i­nal con­di­tion after the inten­sive use of arti­fi­cial snow. A pre­cise plan­ning in the shoot­ing order of scenes is there­fore most important.

Apart from that, there is not much to con­sid­er here, except that some arti­fi­cial snow types on set can lead to slip­pery conditions.

ACTORS

Arti­fi­cial snow is large­ly prob­lem-free for your per­form­ers. How­ev­er, please ask them for spe­cial aller­gies in advance — we will then take into account the ingre­di­ents of the prod­ucts we use and will con­tact you if necessary.

Cloth­ing and hair of the actors, as well as props can be affect­ed by con­tact with some arti­fi­cial snow prod­ucts, but are usu­al­ly easy to clean by wip­ing and wash­ing. We’ll glad­ly car­ry out pre­lim­i­nary tests with sen­si­tive mate­ri­als in our work­shop. If nec­es­sary, you should there­fore plan suf­fi­cient replace­ment and breaks.

CREW & EQUIPMENT

What applies to the actors is also true for the crew and the equip­ment — arti­fi­cial snow can leave behind residue! In addi­tion, falling arti­fi­cial snow can be sucked in by cool­ing fans and cause dam­age to the inte­ri­or of equipment.

How­ev­er, we can help to avoid such mishaps with var­i­ous tech­ni­cal aids. Just talk to us.

AFTERWARDS

The effect and the scene are wrapped. Now the dis­pos­al of the mate­ri­als used and the removal of cal­cu­lat­ed (!) dam­ages can be start­ed by the pro­duc­tion crew. Depend­ing on the snow mate­r­i­al, one ore more of the fol­low­ing tech­niques will be nec­es­sary: hoover­ing, brush­ing, wip­ing, clean­ing with high-pres­sure wash­ers etc. In rare cas­es, any dam­age caused there­by must then be repaired.

Some­times out­doors, small amounts of biodegrad­able mate­ri­als can remain on site and decom­pose or weath­er with­in a few weeks.