Old School Visual Effects: The Cloud Tank (2010)

In fact, ha ha, when I was a teen, I set up a window pane as level as I could with a Super-8 camera beneath pointing up. I added water to about an inch in depth (about all I could manage for the window frame) and then poured milk in to create the cloud effect.

I don't have a recollection of seeing the resulting footage, making me wonder if I bothered filming it. Perhaps from the camera point of view all I got was reflections—or perhaps the whole thing was underexposed. Regardless, it was fun to be young and experimenting like that.

My best low-budget effect (not counting the stop-motion animation I experimented with—of course) was when I set my Super-8 camera upside down on a tripod outside at night. I had a piece of glass (the same glass window frame?) and had painted the silhouette of a house in black paint. The windows of the house were left clear but with white paper backing.

The camera was set up to film the glass-painted house outside at night with the sky/trees/stars that were outside as a natural backdrop through the glass. With the camera rolling I had a small light on behind the glass that made the windows of the house appear to be on. I turned it off after the camera rolled for a few seconds. Then I briefly kicked on a very powerful light that caused a quite a flash behind the silhouetted house.

The last thing to film was a thread I had hanging behind the glass that I set on fire with a lighter. It quickly burned up the thread as the camera rolled.

When the film came back I flipped it around end for end, splicing it back into the final roll of film. The inverted camera footage was now right-side up but with the film playing in reverse.

And so the thread had become instead a flame like a meteor crashing to the ground—resulting in a bright flash. Seconds later the lights in the house come on.