By Dan Parkes (Director)For some reason there is nothing like a good rain scene in a film! It often serves as a dramatic juncture in a character or plot development. One may think you only need to wait a few days before it rains in England... however a little known fact is that natural rain does not show up well on film, other than making surfaces appear wet. Which of course can be a good thing if there is light rain when you don't want it -although it depends on the shot, chances are you may be about to get away with it. But what if you want rain? How did we film our dramatic rain scene on such a low budget?
To start with we made a make-shift 'rain machine' which simply consisted of a garden sprinkler on the end of a long pole. The water becomes more realistic the higher above the actor or area it is, giving it enough distance to fall evenly. Obviously a proper rain machine would have been better...however this was easily accessible and even better... free!
Our boom operator/sound recordist Colin Bradley became our 'rain operator' which also made sense, since were unable to record live sound anyway due to the sound of the sprinkler water -which because of the hose and large droplets did not sound like realistic rain. So in post we added the sound effects of real rain and recorded the actor's lines separately (ADR).The next and most cricual factor is that rain will not show on screen sufficiently unless it is back-lit. We placed a large 2K light behind the actor just off screen and found it was enough to light the rain.
Of course, having large lights around with falling water is a health and safety nightmare and a recipe for disaster, not to mention ensuring you have towels and a change of clothes for the actors. In our case we have the added danger element of filming in January when it was near enough snowing let alone raining, with ice forming in the puddles we were creating and sometimes blocking the hose pipe, then our young actor realising that his actor parents were 'splitting' in the scene and getting upset, plus a growing audience of local youth intent on interrupting the shot.... so in fact the simple trick of back lighting rain pailed into insignificance!
