Narrator: Whether you need a snow storm,
a huge gust of wind, or a fake rain shower,
this man's got you covered.
Some TV shows and movies film scenes in extreme weather
to make the story feel more realistic.
But there's one big problem with that approach.
Jeremy Chernick: You can never count on the weather
to work for you.
Narrator: Jeremy Chernick is a designer
at J&M Special Effects in Brooklyn.
Chernick: You can't schedule the entire crew
around waiting for snow.
Narrator: So you often have to make it yourself.
Jeremy's company creates practical special effects
for a variety of live shows, music videos,
and other productions.
Chernick: All the Disney Broadway shows,
"Aladdin," "Frozen."
Narrator: He made it rain on Shawn Mendes
at the 2018 MTV VMA's.
J&M also rents out equipment for TV shows
like "Gotham," and "Elementary."
Basically, any conditions you can imagine,
he can whip up.
But the trick to creating fake weather
is that it just needs to look real in the camera frame.
Chernick: You don't need all the weather in the world
to know it's raining in a shot this big.
You just need rain in the background or rain on top.
Narrator: So what exactly does it take
to create the illusion of weather on camera or on stage?
Chernick: There are a lot of different ways
that rain is done.
And it depends on whether you're interior or exterior.
Narrator: Outside, you can get a permit to hook
up a hose to a fire hydrant or a water truck.
Chernick: You can split that water out to a variety
of locations, and usually high big towers
go up that can spray water from unbelievably high.
Narrator: Indoors you need a self-contained
system attached to water supply.
Chernick: Right above me is a rain bar.
So we have rain that is pouring down in sort
of a five-inch channel, so if you're looking dead at it,
it looks pretty three-dimensional because you have
rain here and here, and plus we can add a level
of sort of mist into that that will just give it
an even larger depth of field.
And you can rows and rows and rows of them.
The systems in place to keep that rain from never ever
dripping unless you wanted it to rain is actually
more complex than the moments when it's actually raining.
It's mostly fairly low tech.
Narrator: There are a number of different products
that are used to replicate snowflakes.
Chernick: You can get pretty large paper flakes
that are squares and they fall in a very beautiful
and specific way, you can get shredded paper that falls
sort of organically.
You can get it shredded plastic, which has a different
feel to it, and the way that you deliver that
is through blowers that are blowing it far overhead
and a long distance.
Narrator: They also have special soap-based products
that won't stain clothes or make the ground slippery.
Chernick: Essentially, it's like tiny bits of foam
and that is a machine that is pushing that soap
through a filter that makes it into snowflakes.
Environmentally, there's all sorts of stuff
that ends up in the air to fill a picture
in terms of haze, fog, smoke.
Narrator: These effects are usually produced
with a fog machine.
Chernick: The most commonly used interior fog is
glycol based, which is a type of alcohol.
Narrator: Sometimes you want the fog to fill
the screen, and other times you want low-lying fog,
which requires a few special tricks.
Chernick: That is most often done now using liquid CO2,
or liquid nitrogen to chill the glycol fog
to a very cold level.
And that coldness is what heats it low to the ground.
The thing that's funny about wind, to me,
is that you don't see wind unless it's either
moving clothing or hair, or if it has
some fog or some level of fog in it.
Narrator: J&M has fans of all sizes.
We have incredibly quiet fans designed
specifically for live television.
Narrator: With any of these weather effects,
you want to be extra careful to protect
camera equipment and the actors.
Chernick: There's a shield, there's plastic bagging,
there's sometimes tents.
Narrator: There's also a risk of flooding indoors.
Chernick: Often scenery is going to be built and designed
with water catch underneath, so it will be raining
on what looks like the floor,
but it's designed to collect water.
Narrator: While these weather systems
may not be exactly like the real thing,
they get the job done.
Chernick: You don't have to do a huge amount of post work
if your special effects are right and they look right.
And they're telling your story.
And the realistic stuff, is you can tell it's real.