[PLANNING] Prop - Smoke Grenade

As said in our pitch, we wanted to incorporate a smoke effects into our music video (inspired by Tove Lo - Not On Drugs) so I began applying some research to find out where and how I could find something which is able to achieve the effect that we wanted. Trying to find something which had this type of effect was really difficult as the none of the members of the group knew where or how to find it. I also assumed that the college wouldn't have anything that could really help up.

I first came across some images on Tumblr showing photography projects which had the same style of smoke effect that I was looking for. From the photos, it showed that the people in the photos were holding a cylinder tube which the smoke comes our from and I slowly found out that they were called smoke grenades. The photos shows that it was safe to be in human contact with the smoke grenades and that it wouldn't harmful if anyone of us were to use the smoke. As you can see from the photos the smoke comes in different colours and comes our very clearly and gives of a very beautiful and euphoric effect which is exactly what we wanted to achieve in out music video.

























I didn't have any clue if there was any store in London which sold these smoke grenades so I began searching, I mostly found online websites like eBay, Amazon and www.airsoftworld.net but I didn't want to risk waiting for delivery to come through especially since we were on a tight schedule with our filming already. I soon came across website www.wolfarmouries.co.uk, the website states that it sold the smoke grenades which were only available to be sold in store, and when looking further into the website I figure out that they were based in Camden, London. This was perfect as I could personally go to Camden and buy the smoke grenades.

So planned a date to go and buy the smoke grenades which I then bought and tried out myself before I let the team used it. I wanted to see how long it would last for and how well the smoke came out on camera but also what colour worked best. When I was trying it out, something I learnt that the people in the shop never told me was that the grenades gave off a very strong smell when it is set off and that it last for 90 seconds which sound very short however when I was shooting I found out that actually it is a very long time in terms of filming and shooting. If used continuously it can definitely make you a little nauseous and also as you have to hold it for the whole 90 seconds, the longer you hold it the hotter it will get but luckily its isn't hot to a point where it's burning you, just still quite hot. Other things are the wired trigger that you pull to release the smoke it very difficult to pull, the wire is very thin and if not pulling it the correct way it can snap which then won't work anymore, this happened to me once when trying our the grenades, I was meant to pull towards me but I ended pulling it away which then caused it to snap. All of those things were the downfall of the smoke grenades but apart from those minor things the smoke grenade overall give off a really cool effect, works and looks great on camera. Here are some text shoots that of when I tried out the smoke grenades.